“And this shall be a sign unto you : You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and laid in a manger.” — Luke II 12

A happy Christmas to you all, my brethren. This day that “brought glad tidings of great joy ” is specially consecrated to happiness; this festival, above all others, kindles in the heart a joy that be longs to it alone. May you all share bountifully of its spirit; may you know it as a season of rest and healthful merriment; may every enmity yield to peace; may the doors of every heart be thrown wide open to happiness!

But where can real happiness be found? Where can we best slake our thirst for it? Is it found in pleasure, in fame, in wealth? Do we look for its sign? Behold it, then, in the Crib at Bethlehem. “And this shall be a sign to you: you shall find the infant . . . laid in a manger.” Before that poor stable all, the most illiterate and the most learned, all can there learn from the lips of a little Child the secret of happiness; this Divine Infant says to each one of us: “Behold I have come to do the will of Him who sent Me. I have come to be your ransom, but I have also come to be your model, and first to be your model in conforming to the will of God.”

Hasten, then, to the Crib, to adore your God on this day made man for love of you: go to Him and learn that we can only know real happiness when we can say with a sincere heart, “Thy will be done.”

Come to the stable at Bethlehem, you that suffer from poverty, who have known misery in many ways; you who have felt hunger and cold; — come to the Infant Jesus lying in the manger, and learn there the lesson of patience and resignation to the holy will of God. Let your heart be filled with consolation, for the Son of God has made Himself alike to you in poverty. Though the world may look down upon the poor, may despise and condemn them, let them remember that God Himself has honored their state. The Babe of Bethlehem has lifted up the poor and made them His; He has glorified poverty, He has taken away its reproach and its shame. Let the poor crowd around the crib; may they learn from its poverty how to sanctify their own by perfect resignation, how to sanctify all their privations and sufferings by perfect patience; and may they understand and know the blessedness of their reward!

And you who are rich or well-to-do, come to the crib and learn there the lesson of detachment from the goods of this world ; go there to learn the vanity of wealth, the danger of gratifying every desire that money can afford. It is in the poor stable at Bethlehem that the well-to-do can learn why it is that money alone and all it can buy never yet brought them real happiness : it is only there they can learn the way to use money, it is only from the lips of the Infant Jesus that they can properly understand the duties and obligations of wealth.

Remember, then, you that are wealthy, or well- to-do, remember that you are the trustees, not the masters of your money. The God who gave you prosperity can also take it away. And the only real happiness your wealth can bring you is to use it as God wills.

Remember that you hold all you possess in trust for God— and do not forget that the poor are the special friends of God. Do not despise or disregard them. You hold your wealth for the poor — the hand that is stretched out for an alms is the hand of Jesus Christ. His hand is stretched out to you to-day for His little ones — the orphans. Be generous to Him. Do not forget these poor little children on this day above all others, when “unto us was born a Saviour.”

Five-minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year
By the Priests of the Congregation of St. Paul, 1893