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Show THE CHRISTMAS CRIB. It is fitting that we owe the most beautiful of Christmas devotions to St. Francis of Assisi, the brown-robed mendicant whose passage through the hills and valleys of Umbria has left a golden memory mem-ory in the hearts of the world for 700 years. He was the apostle of simplicity, this gentle saint, who could speak so wisely to his little brothers, the birds, who could learn such wonderful lessons from his little friends, the fishes. He found God everywhere, every-where, and saw His likeness in everything. He sanctified the commonplace, seeing the symbol of the Creator in the least of His works, blessing the beasts, praising God in the flowers, loving every created thing. He loved the lambs because they reminded re-minded him of the Lamb without spot, and we read that when he met them being led to the shambles he wept tenderly and would not go away until he had redeemed them from death. One day, seeing a poor little sheep walking in the midst of a troop of goats, he said sadly to his brethren, "It was thus that our Savior walked in the midst of a troop of goats when with the Jews and Pharisees." His friars wished to buy the sheep to save their gentle master f rom distress, but they had no money. A passing dealer one of those opportune providences that follow in the footsteps of Francis seeing the embarrassment of the Brothers, paid for the sheep. Is it any wonder that such a man should have been seized at once with the idea of human beauty of the Incarnation? Is it any wonder that he should have seen in the Nativity not the coming of the King, not the unspeakable mystery of the redemption, but the birth of the Babe in Bethlehem? Bethle-hem? St. Francis may not .have originated the devotion de-votion of the crib it is one of those beautiful growths by which Christianity has nourished the human hu-man soul from the beginning but he at least popularized pop-ularized it in Italy. Christmas was his spiritual holiday. It was the feast of love and St. Francis is the world's greatest preacher of the love of God. His brothers asked him one day if it was right to eat meat on Christmas when the feast fell on Friday. Fri-day. "Assuredly," answered Francis, he of all Saints the closest to the Passion, he of the Stig mata "assuredly, J. would even wish that the princes and great ones of the earth strewed the country and the highroads with meat and cheese in order that the birds and the beasts of the field should have their share in so great a feast." And he began to consider how he should bring the Christmastide near to the hearts and vivid to the imagination of the peasant folk of his country. It was only a genius, one whose mind was as quick as his heart in the service of his Master, who could have hit upon an idea so universal, an appeal so irresistible as the cradle of infancy. From a purely human point of view the Xativity. is one of the great master strokes which make Christianity as a human system so incomparable, so magnificently daring. To cloak the utmost abject helplessness, to weigh down a little outcast Babe with the omnipotence omnipo-tence of the Creator of the world what conception concep-tion of human genius could be at once so bold and so beautiful, so awful and so winning? St Francis saw the possibilities of increased devotion de-votion to his dear Master that would follow the emphasizing, em-phasizing, the humanizing, of this idea. He determined deter-mined to have a great Christian fest, of which the renown should spread through the length and breadth of Italy. He went to Rome it was already al-ready close to the end of the year 1223 and, going to the Holy Father, he laid bef ore the Supreme Pontiff Pon-tiff his idea of the Christmas crib and his desire to celebrate the birth of the Savior with his brethren, to gather together the populace from all the neighboring neigh-boring hill towns and to make the underlying mercy mer-cy and love of the Incarnation so patent to all that no heart in Italy should be able to resist it. . With the Pantiff's blessing and godspeed he started start-ed forth, the joy of Christmas already singing in his heart It was the vigil of the feast before' he arrived in Grecio. He had conveyed minute instructions in-structions to his good friend, Giovanni Yelita, and he found everything in readiness in accordance' with his pious plans. An altar had been built in the open air. A skillful skill-ful craftsman among the brown-robed Brothers had fashioned a crib and grouped round it the ox, the ass, everything as the evangelist had described it and tradition had pictured it in the stable at Bethlehem. ; ihe shrine was in the heart of the wood, and at midnight the Friar Minor led thence a strange company com-pany of mountaineers and peasants, awed and silent, si-lent, who craved leave to go to Grecio to celebrate the Christmas festival. They lighted the way through the black aisles of the forest with flickering flicker-ing torches. As they proceeded they broke the mysterious silence si-lence with song, repeating over and over again the haunting verses of the Umbrian Christmas carols, their liquid Italian religious melody, compared to which our harder northern hymns of a colder Christmas Christ-mas sound hard and conventional. Francis was jubilant. We are told that he could not refrain from shedding tears of joy. One suspects sus-pects that the good saint with all his inimitable piety, had a touch of the dramatic instinct, or at least had well developed that sense of the picturesque pictur-esque which is so 'strong in all true sons of Italy. The Italian immediately groups his ideas into pictures, pic-tures, he at once seizes upon the right artistic moment mo-ment to perpetuate an emotion. It is for this reason rea-son that faith in Italy flowers into so many lovely fancies and that Italy has been the world's inspiration inspira-tion and the world's teacher in art. The love of Jesus so welled up in the preacher's i V heart that every time he came to the sacred Name he was obliged to pause for very ecstacy of devotion. "His voice faltered as if he had tasted delicious honey," says one who writes of him, "or heard a hidden melody the notes of which he wished to catch." The Cavaliere Giovanni Yelita, a trustworthy trust-worthy man who had abandoned the career of arm3 the better to serve Jesus Christ, affirmed on oath that he saw a child seemingly asleep over whom the saint bent, covering him with kisses, and, as it were, awakening from" his slumbers." The straw which the apparition touched is credited credit-ed with afterward working several miraculous cures. A chapel was built on the site of this first Italian crib after the death of St. Francis. |