The following is an excerpt from The Prince of Peace by Alban Goodier.
1. In meditating on the Child in the manger, we cannot do better than follow the contemplation of his own saints. First is the thought of St. Paul: “Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:5–11). Thus St. Paul dwells upon the Nativity in its reference to our Lord himself, his humiliation in it, and his glory.
2. Next is St. John, writing long after St. Paul: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . . And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1:14–18). And he comments on this passage in these words: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:9–11). Thus St. John dwells upon the Nativity in its reference to us.
3. A further contemplation comes from St. Ignatius Loyola. He bids us “to see and consider what they are doing—that is to say, the journey and the labor that they undergo in order that our Lord may be born in extreme poverty; and in order that after such toils, after hunger, thirst, heat, cold, insults, and affronts, he may die on the Cross, and all this for me; and then by reflecting to derive some spiritual profit.” Thus does St. Ignatius apply to this meditation his principle that “love ought to be found in deeds rather than in words”; and by dwelling on the deeds of the love of Christ our Lord, begun here in the manger of Bethlehem, he stirs us to like deeds of love in our station in life; how, as he says elsewhere, “I on my side, with great reason and justice, ought to offer and give to his Divine Majesty all things that are mine, and myself with them."
