…[How] then are we to…[approach]… this King Jesus?….[In part] by understanding the significance of the birthplace of Jesus. Bethlehem is not only the Kingly City of David. It is called the ”˜house of bread’. How fitting that the ”˜Bread of Life’, the ”˜Bread of Heaven’, was born in that city. How fitting that this king of peace would give his own life, his own flesh to feed the hungry with bread. He who would spiritually feed the world with the sacrifice of his flesh, was born in the ”˜House of Bread’.
St Bede says this of Jesus’ manger throne ”“ a cattle’s feeding and drinking trough: “He, whose throne is in the heavens, confined to the narrowness of a manger, so that he might open wide to us the joys of his eternal kingdom. He that is the Bread of Angels, reclines in a manger, that we as sanctified beasts might be fed the corn of his flesh.”
And St Cyril says: “He found that man had become a beast in his soul, and so he is placed in the manger, in the place of fodder, that we, changing from our animal way of living, may be led back to the wisdom that becomes humanity: stretching out, not towards animal fodder, but to the heavenly Bread of Life of his body.”
Let us turn from our beastly ways and turn to the God who shows us what it is to be human….