Miguel Augusto (*)
This year, the Vatican’s nativity scene received criticism for its postmodern artistic aspect, which, according to Elizabeth Lev, an art specialist, is not just a “poorly thought-out choice” that generates “division and damage” but would reflect the “strange and modern hatred and rejection of our traditions.”
According to ACIdigital, an opinion column published by the Italian daily Libero Quotidiano, art historian Andrea Cionci assured that the influence of the Vatican’s crib dates back to the “liberal historical-critical method of interpreting the Scriptures.” This approach, he said, has a “tendency to demystify everything that is supernatural in the Catholic faith” – Dogmas, miracles and divine interventions, he explained, are “assimilated to the residues of pre-existing pagan cults.”
In order to better contemplate the mystery of the Nativity scene today, we can do so by referring to the Apostolic Letter Admirabile Signum of the Holy Father Francis given in Greccio, at the Shrine of the Nativity, on 1 December 2019. Pope Francis takes us to the mystery proclaimed and embraced in the Word of the Gospel.
The Holy Father begins by telling us, “The enchanting image of the Christmas crèche, so dear to the Christian people, never ceases to arouse amazement and wonder. The depiction of Jesus’ birth is itself a simple and joyful proclamation of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God. The nativity scene is like a living Gospel rising up from the pages of sacred Scripture.”
With this Letter, Francis also wanted to support the beautiful tradition of families preparing the Nativity Scene, in the days before Christmas, and tells us about the origin of the Nativity Scene. “But let us go back to the origins of the Christmas crèche so familiar to us. We need to imagine ourselves in the little Italian town of Greccio, near Rieti. Saint Francis stopped there, most likely on his way back from Rome where on 29 November 1223 he had received the confirmation of his Rule from Pope Honorius III. Francis had earlier visited the Holy Land, and the caves in Greccio reminded him of the countryside of Bethlehem. It may also be that the ‘Poor Man of Assisi’ had been struck by the mosaics in the Roman Basilica of Saint Mary Major depicting the birth of Jesus, close to the place where, according to an ancient tradition, the wooden panels of the manger are preserved.
“The Franciscan Sources describe in detail what then took place in Greccio. Fifteen days before Christmas, Francis asked a local man named John to help him realize his desire: ‘to bring to life the memory of that babe born in Bethlehem, to see as much as possible with my own bodily eyes the discomfort of his infant needs, how he lay in a manger, and how, with an ox and an ass standing by, he was laid upon a bed of hay’ … On 25 December when Francis arrived, he found a manger full of hay, an ox and a donkey. All those present experienced a new and indescribable joy in the presence of the Christmas scene… At Greccio there were no statues; the nativity scene was enacted and experienced by all who were present.”
In the Crib, Francis invites us to a reality present in each of us: “The gift of life, in all its mystery, becomes all the more wondrous as we realize that the Son of Mary is the source and sustenance of all life.”
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