Angelus News | December 20, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 43

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The case for the A new letter from Pope Francis argues that a Nativity scene is much more than a Christmas decoration crèche “The Adoration of the Child,” a 17th-century painting by Dutch artist Gerard van Honthorst. UFFIZI GALLERY/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE BY MIKE AQUILINA / ANGELUS It is indeed an age-old question: how to make worship relevant? The clergy struggled with it a thousand years ago, and especially at the great feast of Christmas. If Christians don’t understand the scriptural basis of the holiday, all they’re left with is revelry: tinsel and eggnog, to put it in modern terms. So in the 900s parishes began to develop tropes: short dramatic supplements to the liturgy. A scene would be set on or near the altar, and actors would play the parts in the Gospel story. Sometimes the tropes would be mimed while clergy proclaimed the seasonal readings. Other times they would be acted aloud. Over time, in some places, these efforts developed into grand productions, with musicians, dancers, and professional performers. The liturgy was eclipsed. The clergy got caught up in the showbiz spirit. And the play became the thing. In 1210, Pope Innocent III had had enough. He issued an edict forbidding the clergy from acting on stage, and commanded that the holy day performances be moved off church property. 10 • ANGELUS • December 20, 2019
n of the -century utch artist onthorst. UFFIZI GALLERY/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE That same year, 1210, coincidentally, the pope approved the founding of a new kind of religious community: a group of itinerant men who lived in poverty and preached Jesus Christ as they wandered. They called themselves the “Little Brothers”: Friars Minor. Their leader’s name was Francis. Francis hailed from Assisi, just over a hundred miles north of Rome. After a dramatic conversion, he had taken to the streets and roads, gathering followers. He and his “brothers” strove to share the Gospel with immediacy, intensity, and urgency. But they did it in unconventional ways, not in churches, but in the byways of the world. Innocent III saw Francis’ method, unconventional as it was, as the best candidate available for the much-needed renewal of the Church. Over the next 10 years, Francis and his brothers meandered through Italy and even went to Egypt with the Fifth Crusade. His band grew at a rate that was astonishing. Francis strove to keep a spirit of simplicity and poverty even as the Little Brothers’ greater numbers won them influence in the Church and in the world. By 1223, however, it was clear to everyone that the rule of the Franciscans needed to be overhauled. Pope Honorius III oversaw the reform, which required the Friars Minor to become more formalized and institutionalized than Francis had wished. For the first time his band was called an “order.” The pope gave him permission, perhaps as a consolation, to celebrate the coming Christmas in a special way — an unusual way — a way that would technically violate the ban of his papal predecessor, Innocent III, on the use of sets and actors in worship. Francis went to the town of Greccio, about halfway between Rome and Assisi, and there he conspired with a loyal old friend named John. “I wish,” he said, “to enact the memory of that babe who was born in Bethlehem: to see as much as is 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 rested on hay.” He asked John to plan and prepare such a scene, to be presented on Christmas Eve. (The details are recorded in the two earliest biographies of Francis, by Friar Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure.) John did as his friend had asked. He brought together live animals, with human actors to portray the Holy Family. The baby rested in a real manger, a feeding trough. When Francis arrived he found a crowd of local people gathered around, their torches lighting up the night as if it were day. Then the local priest came and offered Mass over the manger itself, using it as an altar. Francis, who was a deacon, chanted the Gospel and preached the Christmas sermon. This is what he had always desired: to share the Gospel with immediacy, intensity, and urgency. He wished to make worship relevant, of course, but not through pageantry and entertainment. He wanted instead to make the word visible. OCTAVIO DURAN/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE The heart of the Sanctuary of Greccio, Italy, in 2013 in the small Chapel of the Nativity built in the grotto that, according to local tradition, is where St. Francis arranged the Nativity of Christ. A rock under the altar indicates the place where Christ’s image was placed in the manger. December 20, 2019 • ANGELUS • 11
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Page 7 and 8: NATION A bishop’s brave revelatio
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Page 15 and 16: People dressed as villagers from an
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Page 19 and 20: ROBERT DUNCAN/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
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Page 27 and 28: wrenching and historically complex.
Page 29 and 30: And the bigger the numbers, the les
Page 31: Los Angeles. Heather King’s artic

Angelus News | December 20, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 43

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