With all the Christmas cards we’ve received, and the emails, and our own nativity scene, it is easy for us to imagine what happened that evening, and to see the warm glow of the child giving off divine light, he is the light of the world, amidst that dark and damp and musty place for animals. Mary and Joseph are warmed by the glow too.

Yet there is a tinge of reproach in John's description. John says it at the very beginning of the account of the incarnation itself. “He came to his own people, and his own did not receive him.” (Jn 1, 11).

Music: Die Schonsten Deutsche Weihnachtslieder, begins with Holy Night. @christmasworldbyzyxmusic3882

Thumbnail: Adoration of the Shepherds by Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714-1789). Detroit Institute of Art.
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