“The Sacred Heart of Jesus Begins Even at His Birth the Work of Our Redemption,
by Suffering and Instructive Example."
By Rev. J. Fuhlrott
"She laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. - Luke ii. 7.
Holy Scripture tells us that to save his life the child Moses was placed by his mother in a basket made of bulrushes, tightened with clay and pitch, and laid in the sedges by the river's brink, where he would be found by the king's daughter. (Exod. ii. 3.) What a sad fare for an innocent new-born babe! But the child Moses in the basket of bulrushes was only a prototype of the divine Savior, who at His birth was laid by His Holy Mother in the poor manger of the stable. "She laid Him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." (Luke ii. 7.) The fathers tell us that this wooden manger, which is still preserved and venerated at Rome in the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore, was for Christ a model of the cross which He was to carry all His life long. "Christ," says St. Peter Damian, "lying in the manger, typified the way and manner of His martyrdom," and another saintly writer says: "Jesus, exposed to the cold, and lying on the hard wood, began then the sufferings and torments of martyrdom;" while St. Bernard writes, "Consider the life of the good Jesus, and you will find it nothing but a cross, from the moment of His incarnation, He was always suffering."
You may recognize in this, dear brethren, the wonderful arrangements of god; the sacrifices of the Israelites pleased Him no longer, nor the blood of calves and oxen. His divine justice required another kind of sacrifice, a sacrifice of peace in expiation of the sins of the whole world, and this was the divine Heart of Jesus, which was ready at the will of the Father. God willed that this innocent sacrifice should be offered up to Him, and the child Jesus offered the same most willingly; therefore the Lord said to the Psalmist: "Burnt-offering and sin-offering thou didst not require: then said I: Behold I come. In the head of the book it is written of me that I should do Thy will: O my God, I have desired it, and Thy law in the midst of my heart." (Ps. 39 v. 7, 8, 9.)
The holy fathers point out who was that nobleman of whom St. Luke relates (xix. 12) that he went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. St. Basil says, "This nobleman was none other than Christ our Savior, for He is not only noble as to His divinity, but also as to His humanity. He went into a far country, for He left the bosom of His Father in heaven to come into this world which was a strange country, where, not without great pains, He sought a kingdom for Himself." And what kind of kingdom did He seek? Contemplate the Sacred Heart of Jesus and you will find therein this kingdom. The Lord reigns from the cross. "This dominion of the most bitter cross was for Him, above all the kingdoms of this world, and his cross was given to Him in the manger, by the Father, as a birthright, of which Isaias (ix. 6) says: "For a child is born to us; and a son is given to us; and the government is upon His shoulder:" (namely the cross), and we add: in His Heart, too, for Jesus bore this government, namely the cross and His sufferings, in His heart all through His life.
St. Chrysostom remarks: "The scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross, and the other ignominies and tortures of the passion are the glory of the only begotten of the Father; for this He came into the world, for this He was conceived, nursed by the Blessed Virgin, and brought up by St. Joseph, to die finally upon the cross, as a sacrifice of love, for the salvation of all, and sill more, even after His death and all the agonies that He endured, out of pure love to leave us His Hart as a pledge." O good Jesus! I know not how to admire sufficiently this infinite love of They divine Heart! Thou dost indeed love me without bounds, O must Sacred Heart of Jesus, for Thou doest consider it an honor to suffer for me, and my heart should not love Thee in return? For my sins, Thou didst suffer inexpressible tortures, and I would not leave off adding sin upon sin? O kindest Jesus late indeed have I loved thy most amiable Heart! Behold in me, a repentant sinner, for in future They divine Heart shall be the only object of my love!
Josue, the unconquered general, who loved his people in adversity and was faithful to the end, after having led them finally with tremendous difficulty through the river Jordan to Palestine, divided this promised land among them, taking for himself the least and most unimportant place, Thamnath Saraa. in Mount Ephraim, as his dwelling. (Josue xix, 50). When St. Jerome, traveling through Palestine, saw this place, he could not admire sufficiently Josue's magnanimity, that he, although the leader of them all, should modestly choose for himself the most unimportant, rocky, and barren spot in the whole land.
Let us take leave of these prototypes, and return to the original. Josue means, by transposing the letters, O Jesu. Now, what has the meekest Heart of Jesus done, who loved poverty so dearly? At His birth, although the richest, it became for us poor and needy, by choosing for its abode a wretched and lowly spot, the cave of Bethlehem, and for His throne the animals' manger, to show us that He would not only be the shepherd of our souls, but also their food in the Holy Eucharist. O most amiable Heart of Jesus! what would Josue, Thy prototype have said, could he have seen Thee at Thy birth, shivering with cold, lying among the cattle? "Did any one ever hear of a greater "lowliness," exclaims Didacus Stella, "than that of being born in a stable? Or of greater poverty than that of being wrapped in insufficient swaddling clothes? Can anything be more severe than at such a tender age to be laid in a manger?"
Therefore, it is not to be wondered at, that the divine Heart of Jesus, speaking by the mouth of the royal Psalmist, compares Himself to a worm, saying, "But I am a worm, and no man: the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people." (Ps. xxi 7) The worm is cast out from the dwellings of the poorest; Christ and His blessed Mother were refused refuge everywhere in Bethlehem, and were obliged to take shelter in a stable, to protect themselves from the cold. The worm remains burrowed in the wood or in the earth, and is denied the light of day; Christ, who is, in truth, the hidden Lord, began His childhood in a wooden manger, and in His manhood hung on the wood of the cross; as the worm is spurned by every one, even the least of men, and trodden underfoot without mercy, so Christ was persecuted by the ungodly, and trodden under their feet. The worm, on account of its displeasing appearance, is detested by everyone; men turn away their heads in disgust at sight of it. O Christian soul! look at thy Savior's face, look into that most innocent Heart! What does thou behold there? "There is no beauty in Him, nor comeliness; and we have seen Him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of Him, despised, and the most abject of men" (Is liii. 2, 3)
The worm finally is placed upon the angler's hook, and the fish swim toward it, and being allured by the bait, they are caught. O my Jesus! O my Love! Is not Thy most Sacred Heart like unto a worm, which not only offers itself as our food in the Holy Eucharist, but also upon the cross as on a fish hook, fastened by the iron nail. Thou dost call us to Thy service! "O what a humble worm Jesus Christ," says St. Bernard, "the reproach of men and the outcast of the people, despised by all without cause, without punishment, trodden upon like a worm." Christian soul! behold how sad it is, to see Jesus lying in the manger, like the most despised worm of the earth, and embracing the cross with both hands, and pressing it to His Heart. And thou dust and ashes, a veritable nothing, thou darest to pride yourself! "O proud corpse," cries the pious Gerson, "If all thy miseries are not sufficient to humble thee, look, I beg of thee, at the humility of thy King, thy Lord, and thy God. Behold He who weighs the globe in His three fingers, lying in a stable between two animals, and ding at last between two thieves on the ignominious tree of the cross." O astonishing miracle of the love of God! And thou dost not yet love this Sacred Heart of Jesus? Nor conform thyself to His most holy will in all thy affairs? Thy Lord and God lies in a common manner, exposed to every kind of hardship and suffering. He sheds bitter tears on account of the cold, and His whole life will be nothing but suffering, persecution, want, the cross and death. And thou, worldly soul, desirest to enjoy all pleasures to look after the comforts of thy body, to lie o a soft couch, to adorn thyself with magnificent clothes, to be a slave to thy appetite and to obey in all things the cravings of the flesh? O poor soul Listen, as final admonition, to the words of St. Jerome: "It is impossible for anyone to partake of the present and the future joy and to pass from the one gladness to the other." Amen.