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Catholic Bible Study
Joyful Mysteries: The Nativity
00:18:32
Have you ever wanted to grow in your understanding and devotion to the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary? Join Dr. Ben Akers and professors from the Augustine Institute Graduate School as they walk through these Biblical mysteries and seek to grow in understanding and love for Christ through them.
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A
Hello.
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Welcome to Form. Now, my name is Dr. Ben Akers. I'm the executive director of Formed. And joining me today is Dr. Michael Barber, professor at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology, and also author of the True Meaning of Christmas, the Birth of Jesus and the Origins of the Season. We're in the third part of a Bible study on the joyful mysteries. So we're going through the different mysteries of the Rosaries, and we've been diving deeply into the scenes in scripture that we find in the New Testament, but also looking at some of the Old Old Testament echoes. And today we're on the birth of Christ. Thanks for joining me, Michael.
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It's great to be with you.
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Yeah. I'm excited because you wrote a whole book on this. I've always enjoyed talking to you. This is only a couple times we've actually had.
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I know. Somehow you're always absent when I'm supposed to be unformed. I know. I think you're avoiding me.
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I'm not avoiding. I'm here today. I am here today to talk about Christmas. And so this is just a beloved mystery of our faith.
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It is the.
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The. The nativity of our Lord. Where should we start?
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I actually. I believe it was St. John Chrysostom who called it the chief and mother of all holy Days.
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Stephen Mother.
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Okay. How about that?
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I know that people, even in secular society, love to celebrate Christmas.
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Yep.
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But how much more should we celebrate this great high feast?
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Right. I think a lot of people have a longing for the things that Christmas is associated with. Things like homecoming. Right. Nobody ever talks about Labor Day magic. Ever noticed that there are no songs devoted to Memorial Day? But Christmas music is its own genre. And the best Christmas songs. And there are some silly ones, but the best Christmas songs are the ones that tap into our deepest yearnings. And so many of them talk about what? Wanting to be home for Christmas. Or I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know. So many people get sentimental around Christmas time. And I think what we've often done is we've associated the things that matter most to us. Being with loved ones. Reuniting with the ones who are closest to us. Home. We've associated those things with Christmas for good reason. Because really, all those things are at the heart of the story of Jesus's birth.
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So it's God coming home.
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Yeah. And in a way, invitation for us to come home to him and to be part of his family. Because what Christmas is ultimately all about is gift giving. Right. And a lot of people are upset that gift giving has become associated with Christmas. And they say, well, that's just pure commercialism. Well, don't get me wrong that there is a danger of commercialism at Christmas. But the idea of gift giving is rooted right in the story of Jesus nativity. Of course, in the Gospel of Matthew we read about how the magi came later, they brought gifts. But the greatest gift of all is that God gives us his only beloved Son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved son.
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Yeah, John 3:16, that verse we see in all sports events.
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Yes, it's there, right?
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I mean it's about the gift of God giving his.
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That's right. So the greatest gift of them all is that the, the God of the universe, the creator of everything, humbled himself in love and as Paul says in Philippians, took the form of a servant. Right. And was born in the likeness of men. Origen, the great early Christian writer, talks about the amazing mystery that is the Nativity. And he explains that there are no words that can articulate what is happening in the mystery of Christmas. There are no speeches eloquent enough to describe the true wonder of Christmas. That the God of the universe took the form of not just a human being, but took on the vulnerabilities of being an infant. Origen talks about how Christ made sounds like other infants make. You know, there's a certain nobility in dying. Right. For a man to give up his life. It's much harder to find nobility in making the sounds that infants make. Yeah, exactly right. So here we see a love that surpasses all other loves. We live in a world today that has given up hope and love. I think who the world around us wants to deconstruct love. People are just self serving. They just want something from you. But in the story of Christmas, we discover the love that we're all longing for. The God who comes to us to bring him, bring us to himself. And that homecoming is what Christmas is really all about.
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That's beautiful. Now if we're going to dive into scripture on this scene, where do you want to start? Is Luke's going well.
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Really? Yeah. The only place to really read about the night of Jesus's birth is the Gospel of Luke. We do read about Jesus's birth in the Gospel of Matthew, but it's Luke who tells us about what happened on the night Jesus was born.
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So we're in Luke 2. If you want to join, get your Bible and join along with us. We're in Luke 2.
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One right and we read in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that everybody should be enrolled. And there are lots of discussions about how to correlate the details of Luke with other historical sources. We don't have time to get into all the complexities there. The key thing is that at the beginning, we see that the king of the world.
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Yeah, the most powerful man in the world, right.
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He thinks he's calling the shots. And he decides that everyone needs to go to their hometown to be registered. And that is what causes the Messiah to be born in the place where the prophet Micah announced the Messiah would be born. So it's funny. The king of the world, so to speak, the emperor thinks he is calling all the shots, but really he's just a puppet in a way. God is allowing him to issue this decree so that the Scriptures can be fulfilled. So Jesus is born in Bethlehem. And we read that they. They went. So Joseph went up from Galilee, from a town, from the town of Nazareth to Judea. And it says, go up, even though they're going south. Right. But you go up to Jerusalem because Jerusalem's a mountain. So as one scholar puts it, you could be on the moon and you're still going to Jerusalem. In a Jewish mindset, they go up to Jerusalem. I'm sorry, they go up to Bethlehem. And this is where Jesus is born.
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And this is just a couple miles away from Jerusalem. Right. So we're geographically right.
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It's not long. It's. But it is a different city. I said Jerusalem would go up to Bethlehem. And of course, Bethlehem is not a major city. It is not a bustling town. It's not a center of power. The song captures it well. Little town of Bethlehem, Right. It's a sleepy town. The reason Bethlehem is important is because of its past.
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Yeah.
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It was there that the greatest king in Israel's history was born. David. King David puts Bethlehem on the map. Okay. So Jesus is born in the city where David was born.
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And he's of the line of David.
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Of the line of David. Right. Because Joseph is his father. Right. And we go on. Joseph is from the line of David. And that's not a problem. If he's not his biological father. Is he really the son of David?
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No.
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Emperors were adopted by previous emperors. That's how the emperor Caesar Augustus himself
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was an adopted son of Julius.
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Right. So all that mattered was, by law, you're in the royal line. And so it says, while they were there, the time came for her, for Mary to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid them in a manger. Now, the Greek word there for manger is fatne. And it can't. It can mean like a horse stall, but because it says that they wrapped him up, that seems to suggest that he was put in a smaller place. And so fatne has the meaning here of like a feeding trough, most likely. Right. So he's put where the food goes. Now, that's really significant. I just want to go on. It says, because there was no place for them in the end. Now, I explain in my book on Christmas, that's really a terrible translation because the word that's translated in there actually doesn't mean in. And people have all kinds of weird
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ideas, like the best Western or.
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Right. It's like. Is there like. A lot of people have the idea that when Joseph and Mary come to Jerusalem, they're looking for a place to stay in.
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They didn't make reservations online, right?
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Exactly. There's a no vacancy sign, Hotel Bethlehem, you know, but that's not the word. The word for inn is actually pandochian. It's the word that used later with the story of the Good Samaritan, where he puts him in. There's no innkeeper here in the story. People have read a lot of these ideas and. But I'm not just trying to be a mythbuster here. There's a reason I want to point this out. The word in, in Greek is kataluma, and it's the same word that's used later in the Gospel of Luke to describe the upper room. So a better translation would be they laid them in a manger because there was no. There was no space for them in the room would be a bit. So usually when you'd have guests, you'd stay in the separate guest chamber. And that's probably what's going on here. Because they came to such a humble home, probably family members, there was no room for them. There's a tradition that Jesus was born in a cave. And actually in the ancient world, they would use sometimes caves as houses. So that's not out of the realm of possibility either that this was some kind of house made out of a cave. But the point is, the manger is a substitute for the room. Right. The word in his room. So they put him in the manger because he can't be in the room. Later, Jesus is in the room, and what does he do? He says, this is my body. And so what we see later is that when Jesus is in the room. He identifies himself as food in the Eucharist. And so the church fathers saw this as highly significant that Jesus is born and laid in a feeding trough where animals go to prefigure how later when he's in the room. So the manger is a substitute for the room, for the upper room, because he can't be in the room. He's in the manger. Later when he's in the room, he explains he is the food. And so church father saw it as very significant that he was born in Bethlehem because in Hebrew beth means house and lehem means bread. Jesus is born in the house of bread. And this is ultimately a eucharistic image for us according to the church fathers. And so the Church understands, understands that every time we come to Mass, we're going back to the manger.
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That is beautiful. I what visually comes to mind is I was blessed to live in Rome for five years and at St. Mary Major.
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Oh yeah, right.
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There is right below the altar, right? You know, fragments of the manger.
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That's right, that's right.
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The connection between altar where we get the body of Christ and then the manger where his first was laid.
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That's right. And actually it was. If you go even further back, you'll see that he was very early on in Jerusalem that they would celebrate Mass on Christmas. Now those terms Mass and Christmas are related. You know, a lot of people say don't take G. Don't take Christ out of Christmas. Don't take rise out of Christmas. Especially non Catholic Christians will say that a lot. Keep Christ in Christmas.
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Don't put the X Men.
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Of course, the X is just abbreviation of the Greek name Christ. It starts with anyway. But the Mass is really important. So I have a Protestant friend who wrote on his Facebook page, and he's Protestant. You know, isn't it strange that Protestants are really concerned with taking Christ out of Christmas, but they never talk about the danger of taking the Mass out of Christmas.
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Right, right.
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Which is true. So what is, what is Christmas all about? Christ comes and he comes to us humbly as a child, and he continues that coming, that humble coming to us as food, just as he was laid in the manger. In the Eucharistic celebration, the incarnation is extended. That mystery of Christmas is extended. And so we call the celebration of Jesus's birth Christ's Mass because it's actually in the Mass that what we are reading about, the mystery we read about here is actually made present for us in the Church's liturgy and in Bethlehem what they would do is they would, they would celebrate in the cave where they believed Jesus was born. And so when the early Christians in Rome started celebrating Christmas, they, they wanted to duplicate that in some way. And that's where they started building a chapel underneath at, Underneath Mary Major so they could feel like they were in the same place. And they would even do it at the same time that they believe Jesus was born. So in Luke we read, we go on to read that there were shepherd the field watching over their flock by night. And so Jesus seems to be born at night. And in the book of wisdom, we read in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon, there's a fascinating passage there where Wisdom seven. Yeah. Right. So in wisdom seven we read about how the word of God. No, no, wait, it's wisdom 18.
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Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I was thinking wisdom seven about the swaddling cloth.
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Right. No, in wisdom 18. Yeah, we read wisdom 1815, your all powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne into the midst of the land that was doomed. Okay. In the. Oh, right before that it says, for while gentle silence enveloped all things and night in its swift course was now half gone. Europe, all powerful word left, leapt from heaven. So where do we get the idea of silent night? Yeah, it's from here. Okay. Where do we get the idea of midnight mass? When it was it that the word leaped from heaven down to earth? It was when night had half past. And so the early Christians, John Chrysostom in particular, interprets this as saying Jesus is born at midnight. And so the church develops, develops a tradition of celebrating midnight mass. And it's first celebrated at midnight in Jerusalem and in Rome. We see. And they go to the main. Why? Because they just want to, you know, it's just for pageantry. It's because they believe that what happened in this gospel story is made present for us every time we celebrate the eucharistic celebration.
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Wow, that's amazing. And I, I even see that the, If I continue wisdom 18, like a stern, like a warrior. Oh yeah, he's coming to save his people.
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That's right.
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So this is amazing. Is. But God's coming to save his people as a baby.
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That's right. It's truly remarkable. And then of course we go on to read about the, the, the angels. You know, we read about the shepherds in the field. We could talk more about that some other time about why shepherds are important. Right. They're, they're not unclean for ancient Jews, but they are lowly. And so Caesar doesn't know what's going on. The King of the world doesn't know. But. But the angels come and they announce to shepherds. And this fits with what we read earlier in Mary's Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke, that God has brought down the mighty from the thrones and exalted those of low degree. And so God humbles himself so that those who are humble can be exalted.
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That is beautiful. And it is a powerful thing to think about. The most powerful man in the world, probably in the palace.
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Right.
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With all, whatever he wants at the snap of a finger. And we have the poverty, and he
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doesn't know what's going on in his kingdom.
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Yeah, he doesn't know what's going different from this point.
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That's right. That's exactly right. And of course, the angels will come. And we go on to read that they saw the host of heaven, which doesn't mean that they were, you know, like serving guests or, you know, host is like, you know, not someone who's throwing a party. But the Greek word for host is actually the word where we get the idea of army. So here you have the heavenly armies, and the heavenly armies are revealed, but they're hidden. Actually, you can't see them. So the true king of the universe comes, but his armies are hidden. And later, of course, when the devil tempts Jesus, he. He encourages him to throw himself down, let the angels carry him. Jesus is not going to call the angels to defend him. Yes, heavenly army that could defend him. No, he comes in humility. And the way the angels fight, the way the army is presented, is this worshiping, singing. Glory to God in the highest. The song we sang at every Sunday Mass. Glory to God in the highest. Why? Because at every Mass, the same mystery that we read about here is once again made present. And those angels that sang on Christmas night are with us. The church understands in the Eucharistic celebration.
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I love that the. The fact that the angels are singing and the fact that the church actually, in her wisdom and Advent, we don't sing the Gloria.
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That's right.
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So that we can sing it with the angels singing on the same day that they sang Gloria for the first time.
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Excellent.
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And the fact that angels welcome Christ.
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That's right.
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Well, they announced his coming.
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That's right.
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To Mary and to Joseph and to Zechariah. But they welcome his coming. And they're also going to be with him throughout his life and even at. At the end of his life.
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One last final thing. Peace among those with whom he is pleased. The Hallmark card says peace on earth and goodwill to men. That's based on an older version of the New Testament Greek that we now know isn't reliable. It's found in the King James Version or the old Douay Rheims Bible. But now we know that that's probably not the original Greek of Luke's Gospel because we have more ancient manuscripts. Peace is only with those whom he's pleased. Right. And what does it mean to be among those who are, who please God? We find out later in the next chapter. Jesus is baptized and hears a voice from heaven. Right. There's a voice from heaven. This is my son, in whom I'm well pleased. So how will we find peace if we're like Christ, who models for us what it means to be pleasing to God.
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That's beautiful. And thank you for your incredible wisdom. Thank you for writing this book, the True Meaning of Christmas. You can find it on Catholic Market. And thank you especially for this eucharistic interpretation of the scene. It's going to change the way that I pray this particular mystery of the rosary. So we're going through the different Bible study and the different mysteries of the rosary. Dr. Barber just walked us through the third joyful mystery of the birth of our Lord. Thanks, Michael.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you. God bless.