for the Birth of the Holy Child!
“At that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying,
‘Who thinkest thou is the greater in the Kingdom of Heaven?’
And Jesus, calling unto Him a little child,
set him in the midst of them, and said:
‘Amen I say to you, unless you be converted,
and become as little children,
you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ”
Matthew 18:1-3
“Amen I say to you, whosoever shall not receive
the Kingdom of God as a child, shall not enter into it.”
Mark 10:15
“Amen I say to you, whosoever shall not receive
the Kingdom of God as a child, shall not enter into it.”
Luke 18:17
As the Alpha and the Omega, Jesus is both the beginning and the end. And as His creation made in His Image, we have been given this prophetic lesson of our own beginning and end through our own birth and death.
After His death, the Lord was then Resurrected in His Glorified Body as True God and True Man. In His appearance to His disciples, He showed them the wounds He had suffered to redeem mankind. It was a sorrowful Lord who took on the punishment of our sins in His own human Body. And to prove His Resurrection to His disciples — especially the “Doubting Thomases” — it was important that they see this was the same wounded Body that had been crucified on a Cross. That which once was dead, rises to die no more.
The proof of the Resurrection was before their eyes.
But is this the Body that brings joy to the Lord? A Body that bores the disfigurement of His creation’s rejection of Him. While this Body brings Glory to the Lord, it is a Body that is a Sorrowful Mystery to Him — a reminder of His heavy Cross.
There is, however, another Body that the Lord loves. A Body that brings Him Joy! He has proven it through the centuries to those Saints He favored the most. It was St. Francis of Assisi who saw Jesus in the Manger. Through this vision, St. Francis gave the world the creche scene we enjoy at this season. It was St. Francis’ friend, St. Anthony of Padua, who held the Holy Child in his arms.
For those who are skeptical, the list of those favored by visions, messages and love from the Lord as the Holy Child are not just medieval. And for the sake of brevity, we will mention just two Saints of the 20th Century who were favored in this way by God.
The first is St. Maximilian Kolbe, founder of the Knights of the Immaculata, and martyr of Auschwitz. As a child, St. Maximilian was blessed with a vision of the Holy Child and His Mother when he was presented with a vision for his own future. Did St. Maximilian want a heavenly Crown of White for purity or a Crown of Red for martyrdom? The Saint chose both and died as a celibate priest in place of another man at the hands of the nazis! St. Maximilian, after leading other prisoners in the prayers of the Rosary as they were being starved for weeks, died from an injection of poison with an ecstatic look on his face as if the last thing he had seen, like St. Stephen the first martyr, was Heaven opened before his eyes.
Another 20th-century visionary favored with visions of Jesus as a Child was St. Faustina, the woman whom the Lord called His “Secretary of Divine Mercy.” St. Faustina took great care to note in her diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul, that when she saw the priest consecrate the Sacred Host during the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Host turned into the Holy Child!
So what does this all mean for us? For our protest-ant friends who do not favor such visionaries and constantly ask, “Where does it say that in Scripture?” the Lord has ensured that not once, but three times in His own Words He emphatically states that we cannot enter into His Kingdom unless we become as a child.
For those willing to accept the great visions of these incredible individual Saints — Francis, Anthony, Kolbe, and Faustina — the Lord has ensured the Truth of these Scriptures verses by favoring those closest to Him with the Image of Who He likes to be the most. For the Lord loves to be the Holy Child!
Why? Look at Him! He has not yet been wounded by His creation! His Body is innocent and pure, untouched by evil hands and free of invasive objects!
And as the Holy Child, the Universe is His to play with and rule! He has won this right because of His “Yes” to the Eternal Father to redeem God’s creation! As the Ancient of Days, nothing pleases God more than to be a Child, rejuvenated and young at Heart!
Don’t believe us? Don’t take our word for it. Read the lives of the Saints. Don’t believe them? Then read your Bible:
“And every creature, which is in Heaven, and on the Earth, and under the Earth, such as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying, ‘To Him that sitteth on the Throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honor, and glory, and power, for ever and ever!’ … And the … ancients fell down on their faces, and adored Him that liveth for ever and ever!” Apocalypse 5:13
In the 2,000-year history of the Church — both in the East and the West — the Lamb has long been the symbol of the Holy Child.
And to be the Holy Child or a child of the Kingdom of Heaven, one must have a mother. The Lord, as part of His dying will and testament, symbolically told His beloved disciples who is to be their mother. And He told it, as we write this on the Feast of St. John the Apostle, to His Beloved Disciple and the visionary of the Apocalypse!
“Behold, thy Mother!” the Lord commands His Beloved Disciple as John records it in his Gospel 19:27. As with all things when dealing with God, the use of the word behold is not an accident. It is a word that is used in the imperative. When one uses a word in the imperative it has the same connotation as coming from an emperor! It is not only expressing a command, but indicates it is “urgent and obligatory.”
In other words, you can’t say, “No!”
This fact of who is our Mother was verified by Mary for us in Her great apparition as Our Lady of Guadalupe — whose feast we celebrated 13 days before the feast of Her Son’s birth as the Holy Child. She verified it in the words She spoke to St. Juan Diego: “Am I not your Mother?”
For those who disbelieve, this ultimate Truth of who our Mother is will be proven again by God in messages to the Lord’s Secretary of Divine Mercy. When St. Faustina hears these words from Mary, she is as diligent as John was in his Gospel to record God’s message in her Church-approved diary: “I am not only the Queen of Heaven, but also the Mother of Mercy and your Mother.” And again, Mary states to her, “I am Mother to you all, thanks to the unfathomable Mercy of God!”
And John — as Francis, Anthony, Kolbe and Faustina did — has told us and shown us what we are to do with Mary, the Lamb’s Mother. “And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own” John 19:27.
When, then, is the “secret” reason for the Birth of the Holy Child?
It is twofold. First, it was not only the obvious reason for the Lord to redeem us from our selfish, prideful and sinful ways through His Death on the Cross; but, secondly, and just as important, to be the beacon of Light to illuminate our way to Heaven.
That beacon began with His Birth as the Star of Bethlehem and His emphatic assurance that we must become as a child — as He did — in order to gain entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
And if we are to become a child, then what does a child need the most?
By His last Words before His Death on the Cross, Jesus gave us what a child needs the most. He did not leave us orphans; He gave us His own Mother!
Through Her, He has given us a sure-footed way to take our steps to Heaven. As any child does when they first begin their earthly walk, a child takes the hands of their mother to guide their path until they reach their safe harbor. The Lord has given us those hands to guide us in our heavenly walk — the hands of His Holy Mother.
They are the hands the Lord Himself held. Hands embraced by the Saints throughout 2,000 years of Christianity beginning with St. John. It is the “secret” that ensured their steps to make it to their safe heavenly harbor.
And those who in their pride reject Her and refuse to become a child — Her child — and yet believe they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, will instead find themselves in the same position as the “kings of the Earth, and the princes, and tribunes, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman, and every freeman” who, on the Day of Judgment, will hide “themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains: And they say to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall upon us, and hide us from the Face of Him that sitteth upon the Throne and from the Wrath of the Lamb’ ” Apocalypse 6:15-16.
The Wrath of the Holy Child who defends His Mother from those who refuse to become as a child -- Her child -- to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!
© 2002 Agnus Dei Presents!