The image that we are looking into is a relocation of Francis of Assisi with the Nativity someplace between Albuquerque and Taos. Charlie Carrillo, the famous New Mexican santero, created it when commissioned by our former Minister Provincial Larry Dunham, to hang with the Stations of the Cross in the hallway of Casa Guadalupe. It is opposite a depiction of the Resurrection with the Stations of the Cross in between. With these images we remember our particular Franciscan devotion to the Crib and the Cross of Christ.

We believe that the birth of Christ, the birth of Jesus, has transformed us all into theologians, for now every time that we look into the eyes of a child, or any human being, we are studying God. And God is looking back at us.

It takes a while to come to understand that meaning of the Incarnation, of Christmas. The early Christians understood this when putting together the Gospels. Mark said nothing about the birth of Jesus. Matthew records the gift that the birth of Jesus was for his people, Jewish Christians. Luke sees that Christ’s birth is a gift for all human beings, so he mentions government officials, women, poor shepherds, and angels.

Caesar Augustus set the story at a definite time, like Pope Francis, or President-elect Biden. The birth of a child sets the story in each of our personal timelines, for every one of us began our life as a baby. The poor shepherds set the story in the real world of people going about the work they had to do to make a living, with worries of the wolf-or the virus-at the door. The angels tell us that God constantly reaches out to all of us.

Christmas is about God reaching out to us in a most extraordinary way. At the heart of Christmas is a simple message: God loves us so much that God becomes not just one of us, but vulnerable to us – listen to Luke’s words again: “There was no room for them in the inn. . . . And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” A homeless, poor baby lies in a manger in a stable, not in a crib in a house.

Could God’s vulnerability be part of why so much of our Christmas observance centers around babies and children? We see, we know, how fragile, how needy, how powerless babies are, how trusting and open children are, and someplace deep inside us, we realize that God puts himself in our hands in the very same way. In every infant born into the world, in all of our relations with each other, looking into each other’s eyes makes us all theologians, studying God as we look at one another, and as God looks back at each of us.

At Christmas, God reveals how precious all of creation and all human life really is. We are to share that revelation in its wholeness, in its fullness. We need not try to protect some little piece of that truth that we think is the most important. It takes time to understand the meaning of Christmas: God let go of Heaven in order to hold on to us; we are to let go of our thinking that earthly things even earthly biases, as Richard Rohr shared with us in his fourth Advent reflection, are our most important possessions, so that we can reach out – in our weakness, in our vulnerability, with our empty arms and hands - to love God and each other in return.

Francis of Assisi once wrote of the Eucharist, but also of the Incarnation, of God becoming one of us: “Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, so that God who gives Himself totally to you, may receive you totally.” God loves us that much: in the Crib, on the Cross and in the Eucharist, and God wants us to love each other the same way.