In December 1224, about two weeks before Christmas, St. Francis contacted a friend and
asked for help: “If you want us to celebrate the present fast of our Lord at Greccio, go with
haste and diligently prepare what I tell you. For I wish to do something that will recall to
memory the little Child who was born in Bethlehem and set before our bodily eyes in some
way the inconveniences of his infant needs, how he lay in a manager, how, with an ox and
an ass standing by, he lay upon the hay where he had been placed.”
As Francis’ first biographer, Thomas of Celano, recounts the story, “The manger was
prepared, the hay had been brought, the ox and ass were led in. There simplicity was
honored, poverty was exalted, humility was commended, and Greccio was made, as it
were, a new Bethlehem. The night was lighted up like the day, and it delighted men and
beasts. The people came and were filled with new joy over the new mystery. The woods
rang with the voices of the crowd and the rocks made answer to their jubilation. The
brothers sang, paying their debt of praise to the lord, and the whole night resounded with
their rejoicing…for the Child Jesus had been forgotten in the hearts of many; but, by the
working of his grace, he was brought to life again through his servant St. Francis and
stamped upon their fervent memory.”
Next year will be the 800th anniversary of the living nativity at Greccio, where St. Francis
instituted the custom of nativity scenes at Christmas that we still observe today. Yet in
some ways, those pretty nativity scenes we cherish— beautifully garbed figures, trimmed
with gold, with picturesque angels hovering overhead—have much in common with the
pre-Greccio idea of Jesus, which focused on his divinity more than his humanity. Francis
wanted to evoke the tangible aspects of the Incarnation– the cold, the dirt, the smells, the
bodily suffering into which Jesus was born–in order to open our eyes to God’s passionate
desire to be with us.
As we move through Advent towards Christmas, my prayer for myself and for you, my
dear sisters and brothers, is that God will once again awaken us to His passionate love
and increase our capacity to share that love with everyone we meet. As it was at Greccio-
-where “simplicity was honored, poverty was exalted, humility was commended” and all
became “a new Bethlehem”—so may it be in our lives.
Source: Thomas of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis (1229)