Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

The birth of the Christ Child shows greatness in humility

Through the years, I have loved reading at bedtime to my five boys. It’s been a way for me to build my relationship with them. I get to explore with them in those moments, in age-appropriate ways, important truths of what it means to be human and a follower of Jesus.

I’m coming now to read for the first time with Colin, my youngest son, who is 11, the three novels of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, written by the British author between 1937 and 1949.

One of the major themes of these books, as well as its prequel The Hobbit, is humility. More specifically, they show with great beauty and insight that the most crucial things that happen in the world are done by the meek and lowly. They are the people whom the rest of the world—focused instead on power and might—ignore and devalue.

I’m glad to start exploring Tolkien’s Middle Earth with Colin at Christmas because this theme is at the heart of the feast of the Christ Child’s birth.

He whom we acknowledge as the Messiah was born in a cave in a small town in what the powerful in Rome would have seen as a total backwater.

And while Christ may have been born to an ancient Hebrew royal family, it was a line that had been stripped of all power or prestige centuries before.

In the face of all of this, the words of the angel of the Lord to the shepherds on the night of Christ’s birth are audacious at best: “Today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord” (Lk 2:11).

At the time that Christ was born, the only person who could claim the title “Lord” (“Kyrios” in the original Greek of the Gospels) was the emperor, Augustus Caesar, who gained that title through force of arms alone.

For the followers of Christ to tell the story of his birth in such a way that they give him the title “Kyrios” was not just daring. It was also subversive of the social and political order imposed by Rome through military power.

The early Christians’ very different understanding of who was Lord and the resulting different understanding of society is a major reason why they suffered such grievous persecution.

While there is relevance in this for Catholic families today as our society becomes more secularized, I think there’s something more immediately applicable in the birth of our Lord for their daily lives. Stories like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can help us appreciate it more.

By virtue of their baptism, Catholic parents and children alike are both conformed to the Christ who, though identified by the angel as Lord, was nonetheless born in utter humility.

And while Christ gained local notoriety as a wonder worker, the ending of his life in crucifixion showed complete impotence and disgrace—at least in the eyes of those who held worldly power in the Roman empire.

We, in our daily lives, are nonetheless empowered by grace to embody the true world-changing greatness Christ achieved through being meek and lowly.

The embrace in faith by Catholic families, from the youngest of children to the oldest of grandparents, of God’s will from day to day in countless small ways will go unnoticed by the powerful of this world.

But God will see greatness in us in them all. He’ll see in them the true lordship his Son embraced in being born in a stable in Bethlehem. †