Amidst the last minute preparations for Christmas, it’s easy to wonder what Jesus, Mary and Joseph would say if they suddenly dropped in on our 21st century yuletide festivities! The real event was surely a bit simpler, primitive—even rude! But that might just be the point of Christmas. God came to earth in littleness and poverty, and he continues to come among us in simplicity.

Many writers, from a Church Father to a contemporary figure like Thomas Merton, have noted this reality. If we can pause long enough to consider their insights, their words might give us pause.…

“The Lord Jesus took compassion on us in order that he might call us to himself and not scare us away. He comes as someone gentle, someone humble.”  – Saint Ambrose

“We can never climb to him, he must descend to us. This is most important in the mystery of Advent—God’s descent to our lowliness out of pure love, not for any merit of our own. Divine mercy is most evident in the tenderness with which the infinite God tempers the strength of his light to the weakness of our eyes and becomes a Man like the rest of us. Our most gentle Savior and Physician of our souls descended from his great height and dimmed his brightness to suit our feeble eyes.  – Thomas Merton

Pope Benedict has often spoken of this littleness of the holy Babe:

“God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as a baby—defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will—we learn to live with him and to practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.”

Just two days before Christmas in 1843 Saint Jeanne Jugan was deposed from her position as the superior of her nascent religious community and began her long descent into littleness and obscurity. Throughout that journey she often repeated, “We must be little, very little before God.” No doubt as she knelt before the crib in 1843, and each year after that, she identified with her Lord in his poverty and littleness and drew great strength and consolation from him.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like yours this Christmas!