Happy Birthday, Jesus!
Dr. Taylor Marshall, probably one of the best Catholic Apologists out there, argues for December 25 as the actual day of Christ's birthday. All the arguments are great and well-reasoned, and his replies to arguments that the date was simply chosen are courteous. Here's the most common sense of them all:
Sacred Tradition also confirms December 25 as the birthday of the Son of God. The source of this ancient tradition is the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. Ask any mother about the birth of her children. She will not only give you the date of the birth, but she will be able to rattle off the time, the location, the weather, the weight of the baby, the length of the baby, and a number of other details. I’m the father of six blessed children, and while I sometimes forget these details—mea maxima culpa—my wife never does. You see, mothers never forget the details surrounding the births of their babies.Now ask yourself: Would the Blessed Virgin Mary ever forget the birth of her Son Jesus Christ who was conceived without human seed, proclaimed by angels, born in a miraculous way, and visited by Magi? She knew from the moment of His incarnation in her stainless womb that He was the Son of God and Messiah. Would she ever forget that day?Next, ask yourself: Would the Apostles be interested in hearing Mary tell the story? Of course they would. Do you think the holy Apostle who wrote, “And the Word was made flesh,” was not interested in the minute details of His birth? Even when I walk around with our seven-month-old son, people always ask “How old is he?” or “When was he born?” Don’t you think people asked this question of Mary?So the exact birth date (December 25) and the time (midnight) would have been known in the first century. Moreover, the Apostles would have asked about it and would have, no doubt, commemorated the blessed event that both Saint Matthew and Saint Luke chronicle for us. In summary, it is completely reasonable to state that the early Christians both knew and commemorated the birth of Christ. Their source would have been His Immaculate Mother.
Is he really proposing that "the early Christians... commemorated the birth of Christ" because people ask him how old his children are?
ReplyDeleteI should say I'm fine with December 25 being the historical day of Jesus' birth, and there does seem to be historical evidence that at least some in the Church believed this prior to the establishment of the Feast of the Nativity.
DeleteI'll even admit that it's possible Mary told the disciples the date. The "every mother knows" and "Don't you think people asked" arguments, though, slide toward sentimentalism.
It's not his argument, per se. It's part of the atmosphere fostered, and some of the explicit instruction preached, by the FSSP priests who staff that parish.
DeleteThere's more to the argument but it does rather ignore the factual evidence of near-total lack of interest or observance in the Nativity for the first few hundred years of the Church.
The Incarnation? Yes.
The Theophany? Yes.
The Passion, Death, and Resurrection? Yes.
The Nativity according to the Flesh? Not so much until a heresy denying Our Lord's full humanity had to be suppressed.
As a sort-of aside, a famous professor at the U of Minn back when I was there would give a lecture at Christmastime on the astronomical phenomenon of the Christmas Star, and how the Magi would have followed it to Bethlehem. (I had the pleasure of attending that lecture myself one year.)
ReplyDeleteA transcript of the lecture is reproduced in this newsletter.
I'm actually more interested in seeing how he apparently tries to square the circle by arguing that Dionysius Exiguus had it precisely right, and Jesus was born in 1 BC. How this works when we have hard dates for Herod's death and the Quirinius census is something I've gotta see.
ReplyDelete-The Man From K Street