The Stable at Bethlehem

Whither were Joseph and Mary now to turn? At no great distance from the inhabited houses, there was, on the slope at the eastern end of the place, a cave or grotto, hewn in the rock on which stood the inhospitable city. It served as an occasional stable, of which travelers availed themselves for their beasts, as well as a place of refuge for shepherds on cold and tempestuous nights. Joseph, who had lived at Bethlehem, must have known its surroundings well, and have been acquainted with the existence of this rough excavation. It might be vacant, and would, at least, afford some kind of shelter for the remainder of the night. Hither, therefore, he directed his steps, leading the ass which bore the Redeemer of the world and His august Mother. The cave was unoccupied; how poor and uninviting it must have been is proved from this very fact. Bethlehem was full to overflowing, yet no one had stopped to profit by this rude stable. He who came to take the lowest place had reserved it for Himself.

The Evangelists, St. Matthew and St. Luke, both say that Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea, to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in Galilee, but they do not specify whether the place of His birth was within or outside the city. No reasonable doubt, however, can be entertained as to the locality. Tradition was fresh in the days of St. Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine, who built a large and sumptuous church on the spot, including within its area the cave of the Nativity, at the eastern limit of Bethlehem, on the incline looking northwards. Further, the Fathers invariably affirm that Jesus was born outside, and not within, the town. St. Justin Martyr, who lived in the third century, was a native of Sychar in Samaria. He is, therefore, an excellent authority in this matter. Now, in his Dialogue against Tryphon, he writes thus: “Since Joseph did not find where to lodge in the village of Bethlehem, he repaired to a certain grotto near to it; and being there, Mary brought forth Jesus and laid Him in the manger, where the Magi, coming from Arabia, found Him”. Eusebius of Pamphylia also says: “The place is still shown near Bethlehem where the Virgin brought forth to the light and laid the Divine Infant”. It is noticeable also that the Fathers always give the name of cave, grotto, or den to the spot where Jesus was born,¹ but caves, grottoes, and dens are not to be met with in peopled cities. It is clear, then, that Jesus was born outside of Bethlehem, beyond the walls, even as He willed to suffer outside the gate of Jerusalem; in which we discern one of the mysteries of His immense charity in the face of all the ingratitude and contempt of men.

A miserable receptacle was this cave, with the neglected stall and manger of beasts. We may imagine the confusion and sorrow of Joseph at having nothing better to offer to his august spouse. Yet was he truly thankful to find any shelter for her; and, when we speak of Joseph’s sorrow, we must ever remember that this sorrow existed only in the sensitive portion of his soul. His joy, his delight, was to fulfill the will of God. His devotion to that holy will we have already noticed as having been revealed to St. Bridget by our Lady. The words are brief indeed in which the Evangelist records the birth of the Savior, an event which has no parallel for greatness in the world’s history. We long for particulars, for something on which our imagination can feed, and thus nourish in us pious affections. In the entire absence of all detail, we may gladly avail ourselves of the picture presented to us in a vision with which a holy soul was favored. Maria d’Agreda beheld the most holy Mary and St. Joseph entering the hospice which Divine Providence had prepared for them, and of which, from the light given by the attendant angels, they could at once perceive the rudeness, the nakedness, and withal the complete solitude and seclusion, which was their desire. The two holy pilgrims sank on their knees to return thanks to God with tears of gratitude. Our Sovereign Lady understood the mystery, indeed, better than did St. Joseph, though he, too, was full of faith and submission to the appointments of God’s wisdom; for no sooner had Mary’s feet touched the floor of the cave than she felt an overflowing fullness of interior joy, so that she immediately poured forth a prayer to God that He would generously reward the Bethlehemites, who by closing their doors against herself and her spouse had been the occasion of obtaining them so great a boon as the occupation of this tranquil retreat.

Mary’s angels stood around her, like a guard of honor, visible to her in human form, and to Joseph also, such consolation being due to him in his anxiety and as a preparation for the great mystery about to follow; for as yet he was ignorant that Mary’s delivery was to take place in this abject abode. Mary, however, knew it, and determined to clear with her own hands the place which was to serve as a royal palace to the Eternal King, discharging thereby at once a lowly office and paying due reverence to her Divine Son. But Joseph, regarding the majesty of his most holy spouse, of which she herself took no account, entreated her to leave to him the work she desired to do, and began at once to sweep the floor of the cavern, Mary still lending her aid; and then the angels, as if fired with a holy emulation, came to her help, and had soon cleansed the whole interior, which they, moreover, illuminated and filled with a heavenly fragrance. It was fitting, indeed, that, humble as it was, the place should be purified where the Lord of Heaven, Purity Itself, was to repose. Joseph kindled a fire, with the means of doing which he had come provided, for the cold was great, and Mary and he sat by it, partaking of some frugal viands which they had brought with them, although Mary ate only to conform herself to Joseph’s wishes, for she was becoming more and more absorbed in the contemplation of the approaching mystery. Knowing that the hour was drawing nigh, she presently besought her holy spouse to go and take some rest; and he, complying with her desire, begged her to do the same; with which view he laid coverings upon a rude manger that was there, to serve her as a couch. He then retired apart into a corner of the cavern, and, being immersed in prayer, the Spirit of God came upon him, with a plenitude of power and sweetness which ravished his soul in ecstasy, during which he had a vision of all that took place in that blest spot. Nor did he return to consciousness till he heard the voice of his august spouse calling him; and this deep sleep into which Joseph had been cast was more marvelous and more sublime than that of Adam in the terrestrial Paradise.

Meanwhile Mary had received a call from the Most High which exalted her far above all created things. This ecstasy was one of the highest and most admirable to which she was raised during her most holy life; and by it she was so transformed and illuminated as to fit her for the intuitive vision of God.² During this rapture her Divine Son declared to her that the time of His birth was come. Mary, prostrate in profound humility, gave glory and thanks to God on the part of all creatures, begging for herself new light and grace, that she might know how to treat, and serve, and pay homage to the Word-made-Man, whom she was to receive into her arms and nourish at her breast, for she esteemed herself utterly unworthy of such an office; and, because she thus humbled herself, the Lord magnified her, bidding her, as His true and legitimate Mother, to exercise this office and ministry, and to treat Him as at once the Son of the Eternal Father and the offspring of her own womb. This rapture, accompanied by the beatific vision, continued for above an hour, and concluded with her divine delivery, which, so far from causing her pain, filled her with ineffable bliss, of which, not the soul only, but the body partook, which became so spiritualized, beautiful, and refulgent that she no longer seemed to belong to this earth. Rays of light emanated from her countenance, which wore a most majestic aspect. She was on her knees in the manger, her eyes raised to Heaven, her hands joined before her bosom, her spirit raised to God, and herself, as it were, all deified; and it was in this attitude, when the hour of midnight had struck, that she gave to the world the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, and her own son too, our Savior Jesus, true God and true Man.

He came forth from His virginal cloister even as the rays of the sun penetrate without impairing the crystal glass, as hereafter He was to pass through the stone of His monument and the closed doors of the Cœnaculum. He came forth leaving His Mother’s pure virginity, not only inviolate and unimpaired, but more resplendent than before. He came forth, Himself most pure and most beautiful. It was a birth, although a true and real birth, free from all those humiliating accompaniments which our fallen nature has inherited. Moreover, although He had taken our passible nature, and, having done so, withheld from His body that participation in the glorious endowments which were its due, yet the Divine Wisdom decreed that the glory of His most holy soul should be communicated to the body of the Infant God when coming into the world; even as on Thabor, when He was transfigured in the presence of the three Apostles; for it was the will of God that the Blessed Mother should behold her Son for the first time in glorified form; and this for two ends: the one, that by the sight of His grandeur she should conceive with what reverence she was to treat the God-Man, her Son; for, although she knew this already, the Lord ordained that she should also realize it experimentally, and receive a new grace corresponding to this divine experience. The second object was to bestow on her by this marvelous sight a reward for her fidelity and love, in that her most chaste eyes, which had never rested on anything earthly from the affection she bore her Divine Son, should be rejoiced by beholding Him born all glorious and resplendent.

St. Michael and St. Gabriel were seen by the favored soul whose vision we are briefly describing, standing at a short distance from our Lady, and when the Divine Infant came forth they received Him into their arms with incomparable reverence, and held Him up before the eyes of His Virgin Mother, as the priest elevates the Host for the adoration of the faithful. The Son and the Mother looked at each other—His heart filled with unutterable love for her, and she elevated and transformed into Him. The mystical language of the Canticles could alone render what then passed between the God-Man and her who is symbolized as the beloved in the Song of Songs: “My dove, my perfect one, the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed. How beautiful art thou, my love, how beautiful art thou! thy eyes are dove’s eyes. Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee. Thou hast wounded my heart.”³ And she replies: “My beloved to me and I to him. My beloved is white and ruddy, chosen out of thousands. Behold, my beloved speaketh to me. Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.”⁴ The Divine Infant spoke audibly, at least, to the heart of His Mother. He told her that she was to resemble Him, so that, as she had given Him His human nature, so would He henceforth give her a new being of grace, which, although that of a pure creature, should nevertheless be most like unto His, which was divine. And the beloved replied: “Draw me: we will run after thee to the odor of thy ointments”.⁵ But who can express what passed in that mysterious but brief colloquy of love? The grace which Mary then received accompanied her through life, when she became the living pattern and mirror, and the exact similitude, so far as was possible to a pure creature, of Christ, true God and Man. The Divine Infant then suspended the miracle, or, rather, He returned to that miraculous state wherein the gifts of glory were withheld from His most holy Body. He manifested Himself to His Mother without them in His passible nature, and in that state, profoundly adoring Him, she received Him into her arms from the holy archangels, offered herself to Him to serve Him as His handmaid, and forthwith offered Him to the Eternal Father for the salvation of men. Then, looking at her Divine Son, the joy of her heart, she besought Him to admit her to that kiss which is the desire of all creatures: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth”;⁶ and so she pressed her most pure lips to His, and received the loving embrace of her God and her Son. And in her arms, which served Him as an altar, all the angels of Heaven came to worship Him. Heaven was well-nigh empty that Christmas night, or, rather, the court of Heaven was in the stable of Bethlehem, for the other Persons of the Blessed Trinity were present in a special manner at the Nativity of the Word made Flesh.

It was now time for the most prudent Virgin to call her faithful spouse, Joseph, who, as has been said, was in an ecstasy, and had known by revelation all the mysteries of this Divine Birth. It was now fitting that he should with his bodily senses see, touch, reverence, and adore the Incarnate God, and this before any other mortal man. Returning, then, from his ecstasy, at Mary’s call, the first object on which Joseph’s eyes rested was the Infant God in the arms of His Virgin Mother, leaning against her cheek and sacred bosom. Here he adored Him with profound humility and many tears, and kissed His feet with such joy and admiration that if divine power had not supported him he would have died for very joy and love. Our Lady now, with unspeakable reverence, wrapped the Infant Savior in the swaddling-bands which she had prepared, and then, as St. Luke says, laid Him in the manger, in which Joseph had strewn some hay and straw to render the bed less hard for His tender limbs.

Having now been adored by angels and men, the God-Man was to receive the homage of those inferior creatures of His hand whom we are in the habit of styling brute beasts. They had an honorable post on this occasion. In the stable was an ox,⁷ together with the ass which had borne Mary and her precious Burden; and at the voice of their Sovereign Lady the innocent animals knelt down before the Infant in the manger. Then, drawing nigh, they stood on either side and warmed Him with their breath, thus doing Him both the homage and the service which men had denied Him. Let us gaze for a moment at this touching scene: God-made-Man, wrapped in swaddling-bands, lying in the manger between two animals, as the Church records in the Divine Office for Good Friday.⁸ Then was literally fulfilled the prediction of Isaias (1:3): “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not understood”. St. Jerome is an authentic testimony to this tradition, for, writing to Eustochium, he tells her how her mother, the noble matron Paula, so devout an adorer in the Holy Places, having entered the cave of the Nativity, beheld the stall in which the ox knew his owner, and the ass the crib of his master. St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Nyssa affirm the like; and the Church, as we have said, lends her venerable sanction to this pious and touching belief.

Tradition has also preserved the memory of many wonders said to have taken place on the night of the Nativity, to which more or less credence has been attached; others have been alluded to by ecclesiastical writers. From the living rock in this blessed grotto a vein of pure water began to flow; it was still to be seen in the time of the Venerable Bede. When we recollect the marvel of the grotto of Lourdes in our own day, we feel that such a miraculous occurrence was more than probable. The vines of Engaddi blossomed; the oracle of Delphos was silenced;⁹ idols fell to the ground, both at Rome and in Egypt; the Emperor Augustus is said to have seen in the air the Virgin and Child on the summit of the Capitol, where now stands the Church of Ara Cœli; a fountain of oil sprang from the Taverna Meritoria, on the site of the present sumptuous Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and ran as far as the Tiber. These and other signs are said to have accompanied the birth of the Savior of the world; and it is worthy of remark that even to our day, and among the Protestant peasantry of our own land, pious beliefs are still cherished concerning the marvels said to be repeated on each night of the Nativity.¹⁰ There is a sweetness in the memory of that joyful mystery of our Catholic faith which lingers on in spite of the chilling, poisonous atmosphere of unbelief.