How Does the Nativity Reveal the Eucharist?

At Christmas time, nativity scenes based on the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke fill spaces in and around altars, churchyards, and homes to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas -- that the eternal, only-begotten Son of God humbled Himself to enter the human family, so that we, united to Him, could share, via the grace of the Holy Spirit, in His Divine Sonship, and be restored in His holy image and likeness as children reclaimed by His Eternal Father. 

The crib of Christ, depicted in art since ancient times, also points to many saving mysteries of the Lord’s life which would unfold later in His public mission.  In particular, the setting where Christ is born, a manger in a cave-stable in the town of Bethlehem points directly to the gift of the Eucharist (the word “Christmas” in Old English actually means the “Mass of Christ”, referring to the sacred act of worship where the faithful gather to encounter the Word of God manifest not only in the proclamation of Scripture but also physically and supernaturally in the Blessed Sacrament).   

Pope Francis, in his apostolic letter on the significance of the Nativity, highlights the connection between the Sacrifice of the Mass (especially the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist) and the first Nativity scene arranged by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 at a Christmas liturgy in Greccio, Italy: 

All those present experienced a new and indescribable joy in the presence of the Christmas scene. The priest then solemnly celebrated the Eucharist over the manger, showing the bond between the Incarnation of the Son of God and the Eucharist. At Greccio there were no statues; the nativity scene was enacted and experienced by all who were present. ADMIRABILE SIGNUM [2]

Bethlehem: The Harvest Town

Bethlehem was the ancestral capital of the tribe of Judah and the birthplace of Jesse's youngest son, the shepherd boy David, who would be anointed there as God’s chosen ruler of all Israel. The Old Testament foretold that the promised Messiah, Jesus, the branch of Jesse and David's descendant, would be the chief Shepherd and King of Kings born in the same small city (Micah 5:2). 

Christ’s ancestor Ruth, David's great-grandmother, had first come to Bethlehem to escape famine and glean the abundant fields of wheat and vineyards. The entire region was called a Ephrathah (Hebrew: אֶפְרָת \ אֶפְרָתָה‎‎) meaning “fruitful”.  In old Hebrew, Bethlehem means “House of Bread”, in reference to its abundant grain production, and in Arabic “House of Flesh”, probably in reference to its rearing of sheep and lambs.

Shepherds there also tended sheep for wool production and provided Passover lambs for sacrifice in Jerusalem.  It is in this city that Christ is born of the Virgin Mary in a cave functioning as a stable for sheep and other animals gathered around a manger, a feeding trough (the word "manger", from Old French and Late Latin, means "to chew" and traces back to the Biblical Greek "phatne" or "stall for feeding" - see Luke 2:7,12,16. If you're familiar with the Italian command "Mangia!" or "Eat up!" you'll notice the same root).  Mary places her newborn son Jesus in this manger.  

A New House of Bread  

Why was Jesus born in a stable with animals in the first place? Because there was no room for him at the inn (Luke 2:7). Crowds descending on the city in response to Caesar Augustus' imperial decree for tribes to register (whether for a census or an act of allegiance) in their ancestral cities was the matter-of-fact reason, but the early Fathers understood that the Christ Child's rejection at the inn also signaled Israel's later rejection of the adult Messiah at Passover. It's also interesting to note that the Greek root (katalymati καταλύματι) commonly translated as “inn”  in the Christmas story is also the same word that refers to the Upper Room where Jesus celebrated his Last Passover with his apostles [the first Mass] (Luke 2:7; 22:12). His own tribe in his ancestral town prevented him from taking sanctuary, but he recreates a new holy house, beginning at the stable and finding fulfillment at the Lord's table in the guest room, where everyone is called to take shelter and find sustenance in the Lord's home. For thousands of years, Christians have gathered at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to offer the Divine Liturgy and adore the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist which is laid upon Greek and Latin altars standing over the very place where Jesus was first laid and adored in the feeding trough. But every Catholic church is a House of Bread where one may stop now to welcome and adore Christ in His sacramental presence, just as the Holy Family, shepherds, and others had done so very long ago. 

                             

A New Manna

Right after their stay in Bethlehem, the Holy Family flees to Egypt to escape King Herod's plan to eliminate the Messiah.  Some time later, Mary and Joseph come out of Egypt with the Christ Child alive and safe for the moment and return to Nazareth where their home becomes a temporary Holy of Holies, a domestic tabernacle where they commune with Jesus day to day. In this part of the Holy Family's life, the Church sees Jesus' sharing in the first exodus of his Hebrew people, who had entered Egypt in duress, been taken captive, yet exited victorious on pilgrimage back toward freedom in the Promised Land, feeding upon the first "bread from heaven", Manna, as they journeyed.  Likewise, this points to Christ our Passover, who grants us a participation in his humiliating death, so that we may escape its enslavement through in his victorious resurrection.  On the way towards heaven, the true Promised Land, the faithful are nourished by the new Manna, Christ in the Eucharist.  Jesus draws this parallel in John chapter 6, after he multiplied the loves of bread and fish for the crowds: 

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh...he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate [manna] and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:48-51, 54-58 RSVCE). 

The swaddled Christ was laid on both the wood of the manger & the wood of the cross (altars in a sense), and nestled in the cave of his birth and in His tomb, so that through his life, death, and resurrection, his own self-gift, he might communicate his abundant life to each of us, as our heavenly manna in the Holy Eucharist.  At Christmas, the icon of the Nativity should remind us of the Lord's Supper (Christ's Mass = Christmas), where sacrifice, communion, divine presence, and the joining of heaven and earth continues today.

                                 

Watch the three minute summary below.