Christmas Message of the Superior General

From the Communications Office, on behalf of the General Administration of the Institute, we asked Father Ruberval Monteiro da Silva, a Benedictine, to prepare a Christmas Card. Fr. Ruberval is professor at St. Anselmo, Rome, where he teaches art, symbolic language and liturgy. He shares with us the explanation of the card he has prepared.

The inspiration is that of the oldest image of the nativity scene, which consisted only of the manger in the form of an altar, the Child in a girdle like those also used for the dead, and the ox and the donkey. We find it on sarcophagi from the 4th century onwards. The explicit quotation comes from the apocryphal “Pseudo-Matthew” (XIV, 1) where it says:

Three days after the birth of OLJC, the blessed mother came out of the cave, entered a stable and laid the child in a manger, where the ox and the ass worshipped him. Then was fulfilled what the prophet Isaiah had said, “The ox recognized his owner, and the ass his master’s manger.” The animals themselves held him in their bosom and worshiped him. Then was fulfilled what the prophet Habakkuk had said, in the words, ‘You will be made known in the midst of two animals.’ Joseph and Mary remained in the same place for three days.

In Isaiah 1:3 we find:

The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand’

The animals would be the first to worship the Lord, and after the shepherds, the poor of Israel.

We thought of adding young people as shepherds because the Marist charism consists precisely in leading them to Christ, guided by the star Mary. In a certain way, we learn from the simple eyes of both the young human beings and the humble animals to recognize the One who has nourished us with Himself.