By Fr. Benedict Kiely
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to be in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, formerly Pressburg, staying in the beautiful old town to speak at a conference. To say it is charming sounds like a wedding cake creation; it is because it remains intact and as it should be, not ersatz or artificial, a Catholic city, in its creation and in its deeds.
As one walks its streets, very easy to navigate (a weekend getaway would be ideal to see everything necessary), one notices that multiple churches are open and in use, and that, on Sunday, many families with numerous children spill out into the small squares. Unlike its Czech neighbor, in Slovakia the faith seems healthy, an encouraging sign for those who believe that any resurgence of faith in Europe will come, to a large extent, from its central and eastern nations.
St. Martin’s Cathedral, right in the heart of the old town, is a small Gothic jewel from the 15th century, simple and devout, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, whom the population claims as their own, which is technically correct, as parts of Slovakia were part of what was called Pannonia.
This cathedral has seen kingdoms rise and fall: there the kings of Hungary were crowned. And it houses a small shrine dedicated to the last emperor of the Habsburgs, the Blessed Charles. In the life of an elderly citizen, it was also a witness to the horrors of the two most destructive atheistic ideologies ever known: Nazism and communism. Both cruel systems tried, like Herod, to kill—and failed—the rival to their earthly power, the true King, whose kingdom will have no end.
When the Gospel was about to be proclaimed that Sunday, the organ prelude thundered like a true acclamation, directed at a person of great dignity, a real person. It was a greeting to the Word, who was about to be manifested in Scripture and in the Sacrament, even more truly in his Real Presence: the bread and wine transformed into his Body and Blood. It remains as difficult to discern his divinity in those elements as it was to recognize it in a child in a manger, except by the gift of faith, granted to the shepherds and the Magi.
The cathedral, like every church, humble chapel, or even, by necessity, table or Mass stone, is Bethlehem, the House of Bread, the royal palace of the hidden King.
There was something very fitting about that triumphant organ. As Bishop Barron has written, during the reign of Caesar Augustus, trumpets and acclamations greeted who was perceived as the king of the known world. Yet, in the silence, in the «fullness of time,» the true King appears, not acclaimed by trumpets or organs, unknown, but recognized and adored by rough shepherds and wise seekers from the East.
He has no earthly army, but something much greater: the army of the Heavenly Host. The great and the good, if they even hear of the event, mock it, a very contemporary reaction to the Gospel. And yet, as Chesterton said, history is «clear enough to be understood by shepherds, and almost by the sheep.»
God confounds worldly wisdom with his foolish wisdom hidden. «He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.» Why did they not recognize him, the One whom all the prophets had announced?
In part it was, of course, the «mystery of iniquity,» and the extraordinary simplicity of his birth. But there is more: a God so close, so weak, so helpless, is almost too much to be accepted and therefore seems contradictory to the idea of divine omnipotence.
It is still fashionable, among certain outdated critics of Christianity who have not yet realized that their once-trendy opinions are now passé, to claim that, since pagan legends and myths included stories of a virgin birth or the appearance of a god in human form, this proves that the Christmas story is just that: a tale like the others. Hilaire Belloc, who pierced pomposity and intellectual charlatanism with the weapon of his pen, aptly observed that «it is not a matter of pagan legends transformed. They are inherited pagan premonitions.»
As St. Paul identified in his evangelization at the Areopagus, the unknown God nearby had been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Pagan legends, myths, and fables had prepared the world for millennia for the reality of the Incarnation.
The Incarnation, as the German theologian Ida Görres wrote, had been «intuited a thousand times, sensed, conjectured» by the pagans and by those awaiting the Messiah, but in his humble dwelling perhaps even reality exceeded all expectation.
As with the pagan images fashioned, as St. Peter Chrysologus said, because «they wanted to see with their own eyes what they worshiped,» the desire to know in the flesh the Creator of the night stars is part of Adam’s happy fault. Even today we must not be too harsh with those who seek, though in a misguided and often wrong way, the Only One whom to touch and embrace.
The glorious narrative that will be proclaimed in Christmas Masses throughout this week and the following days—a necessary progression of feasts and celebration—is that He who was intuited has, as Görres wrote, «entered into the visible, to be heard with the ears, to be touched with the hands.»
This is the Good News, ever ancient and ever new, which must be proclaimed anew by the Church with passion and force, especially when we hear of new seekers of truth. God, beyond our boldest dreams, came to us, not in triumph, inaccessible, awe-inspiring and unattainable, but in the babbling of a child in a manger.
He comes once more to be seen, touched, adored, and consumed in the Holy Eucharist, the King hidden in his palace. As Benedict XVI said: «There can be no brighter source of joy»—a joy intuited and so necessary, the very essence of any New Evangelization—»for human beings and for the world than the grace that has appeared in Christ.»
About the author
Fr. Benedict Kiely is a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. He is the founder of Nasarean.org, an initiative to aid persecuted Christians.