The first plastic representation of the Crib sprung, as you know, from the brilliant intuition of Saint Francis of Assisi. Deeply struck and moved by the humility of the Incarnation on Christmas night in 1223 he got a faithful and pious friend called John to bring to Greccio all that was necessary: straw, hay, the manger, and an ox and a donkey in flesh and blood.
“I would like,” the saint said, “to represent the Infant Jesus born in Bethlehem, and to see, so to speak, with the eyes of the body and the hardships he suffered for lack of the things a newborn child needs, how he was put in a manger and how he lay in the hay between the ox and the donkey” (Servant of God Thomas of Celano). Various friars came to the place; men and women arrived rejoicing from the lonely cottages in the region, carrying candles and torches to illuminate that night on which, as the biographer notes further, “there shone forth splendid in the sky the Star that illuminated all days and times.”
A priest celebrated the Eucharist and Francis of Assisi, who was a deacon, sang the Holy Gospel with his strong, sweet voice, clear and resounding.
From Greccio, which had become like a new Bethlehem, the representation of the Crib, which had sprung from the heart of a saint, capable of realizing the most sublime poetry in life, spread throughout Italy, Europe, and the whole world. It kept intact, in the various expressions of culture and folklore, the fundamental message, truly evangelical, which Francis wanted souls to grasp from contemplation of the Crib, a school of simplicity, poverty and humility…
May the Infant Jesus, present in the Crib of your home, be the concrete sign of a limpid and sincere faith, which will enlighten, guide, and direct your life and that of your dear ones.
-Saint John Paul II
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