31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E
Yes, those are geographic coordinates, the unique numerical indicator of a single spot on the surface of the planet Earth. In that spot, there is a hole, and the hole is in the floor of a church, and the church has been there for 1,467 years; but even then, it took the place of another, older one that had served the same purpose for 230 years, then burnt. What purpose does the church serve? It stands over the hole, and the hole opens over that spot: 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.
The floor around the hole is marble, but the marble is worn down and wavy like a dirt path in the forest, though even smoother and even harder because it is marble, after all. The hole is surrounded by a star of metal, brass or bronze or even tarnished silver, to make it clear the hole in the floor is not a mistake or accident or problem waiting to be fixed, but rather the reason that the church is where it is. The star is not very big across, less than a foot, so the hole, too, is small, but large enough to put your hand through it and get it back without getting stuck. If you reach through the hole, you can touch the spot, 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.
People have been visiting that spot and touching that spot since before there was church or floor or hole. 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E is the spot where Jesus was born. Before that, and for a few decades afterward, nobody paid much attention to that spot. But once it became known, even to a few, that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom (they had) crucified (Acts 2:36), every object and every place associated with him took on new and enormous significance. People wanted to see where God had been, and especially where he had been born.
Most of us were born in hospitals, but not much over a century ago, many people were born at home, and to visit the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington is to visit the family home at the time. I remember well the home in which my family lived from the time I was a year and a half old until I was seven, and when visiting my aunt and uncle who live nearby I will often drive past to see that place, where so much happened, and I remember so well. One trip, though, I was with my parents, and we hunted down and they pointed out the apartment in which we had lived until I was eighteen months old. That I do not remember anything from that time does not mean it was not the place where I was, my place from day two or three.
Because we all need a place; we take up space. It starts out small, as do we ourselves, and grows not only with our bodily dimensions but also with the size of our mind and our understanding. Within our place, our house or home, we have our place to eat, our place to sleep: a seat at the table, and a bed, perhaps a room, of our own. Over time, we become citizens of our neighborhood or community, our city, our throbbing megalopolis; but within this greater place we have one or a few spots that are uniquely and personally our place. For even the largest among us do not need much space compared to the sprawl of the city, the expanse of the nation, the wide face of the earth. In all that, no, we really just need a place, a point, a spot.
The immortal, invisible God Who is not so much “in every place,” but rather transcends space, chose to share with us this, our burden of requiring a place. For that he took flesh and found his place in the womb of his most blessed mother. There is a marvelous six-hundred-year-old carol that sings of that mother as a rose, a beautiful, delicate, fresh rose that contains within her tiny body the limitless God. As songs often did that long ago, this one mixes some Latin in with the English; if you need help, res miranda = a wondrous thing; pari forma = equal in form; gaudeamus = let us rejoice; transeamus = let us go there.
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu,
Alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space,
Res miranda.
By that rose we may well see
That he is God in persons three,
Pari forma.
The angels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis deo:
Gaudeamus.
Leave we all this worldly mirth,
And follow we this joyful birth,
Transeamus.
Alleluia, res miranda,
Pares forma, gaudeamus,
Transeamus.
I love that expression, Heaven and earth in little space. Doesn’t that just sum up beautifully how our God is? So holy, so extensive and expansive, so able and effective as for there to be nothing and nowhere that is beyond him; by nature so far beyond us as to leave us gasping and flailing. Yet he will not remain removed and remote, nor nebulous and numinous. He makes himself small, even before us who are small; and having become small, he will be local.
The tiny infant who emerges from the womb of the roselike virgin is Heaven and earth in little space, but he still needs a place, even when there is no room at the inn. He finds a place, between ox and ass, in a stable, in a stall. He lies where feed should be, no place of his own. That place remains, and remains his place. You can go there, and through the hole in the floor of the ancient church, touch the very spot: 31°42'15.5"N 35°12'27.6"E.
But you need not travel so far round the globe and touch that spot, to find the wondrous thing, God who takes up space and makes his place where we can find him; where food would be, we make a place to take in us ourselves this Heaven and earth in little space. Gloria in excelsis deo!
God himself takes up space and needs a place, and makes a place where you can find him, recognize, receive and welcome him; where you can ask him, beg him, adore and thank him. That is the place to be. Let us go there! Let us go there, go now to the place where this wondrous thing lingers for the finding; incomprehensible God, who takes his place in a tiny space. Let us go there; let us rejoice, here.
Blessed Christmas to you all.
Monsignor Smith
