As I have been entering into this Christmas season, one of my favorite things to do as I begin prayer is to look at my nativity scene. I love contemplating what it would have been like to truly be there—to be a fly on the wall at the birth of the Christ child. Something that has been standing out to me is the pure humility required of the Christ child to be born in such a place. The stable was likely full of various kinds of animal waste and other unpleasant smells, not to mention Jesus Himself was laid in a feeding trough. This was not a fitting environment for the birth of the King.

Even though Jesus came in humility, his mission here on earth was significant. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen writes, “Without Jesus, man would be imprisoned within the limits of a purely human life, deprived of every supernatural horizon, in time and in eternity.”

If Jesus Christ had never been born, our lives and everything we do would ultimately be for naught. Our lives would be reduced to the pursuit of pleasure rooted in our broken desires that lead to death. There is so much despair in the world because so many people do not know the love of Jesus Christ, the love that can make the blind see, the deaf hear, and even raise the dead.

As we come to the end of the Christmas season, I pray that each of us would be convicted of the magnitude of the Lord’s birth, death, and resurrection and how it reveals new limits and supernatural horizons for those who live their life with Christ.