After four thousand years of expectation, the moment arrived for the Messias to come from heaven and appear on earth to men. The words of the prophet were fulfilled: "The wilderness shall rejoice and shall flourish like the lily. It shall bud forth and blossom, and shall rejoice with joy and praise. . . . They shall see the glory of the Lord and the beauty of our God" (Isa. xxxv. 1, 2). The birth of Christ, like His conception, was miraculous; painless and pure like the budding of the lily or the first rays of the rising sun, as became the sanctity of God the Son and the virginal holiness of His Blessed Mother. The great event which all mankind looked for, and which kings and prophets had celebrated, occurred in profound peace, in the silence and obscurity of midnight. Without observation, the King of glory entered the world that He had made, with no witnesses but the ox and the ass, in the cave-stable of Bethlehem. The work of the sixth day of creation was finished by the birth of the chief member of the human race, the first-born of mankind. The great cycle of the universe was virtually completed. Slowly it had progressed from primeval energy to solid matter, from the inorganic to the organic, from the sentient being to the rational. Man had been the crown of creation, and now Christ became the crown of humanity. Everything converged upon Him; and in Him the universe, in the course of its evolution, came back to God whence it had originally proceeded. Adore God in this wonderful mystery, which holds so important a position in both the cosmical and the super natural order.
