The Christmas Cow

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”  Isaiah 1:3

My mother’s nativity set is porcelain.  It was a rather optimistic choice for a family of three curious boys, and the figures received their share of battering over the years.  None of them so much as the cow.  The cow in the Michael family nativity set is missing at least one horn.  The glaze is scuffed off in a few places, and the hindquarter has a long brown seam, carefully mended with adhesive after a precipitous fall.

That was my fault.  When I was four or five I went through a cow stage.  Some boys memorize the starting lineup for their favorite baseball team or the Air Force fighter plane fleet.  But growing up in the country, with two farmers for grandfathers, my obsession was cows.  I knew all the breeds, where they had originated, which local farmers raised which kinds.  I could tell you the strong points of Guernsey milk and Angus steaks, and I knew all about those “hairy coos” in the Scottish highlands.   

And Christmas is the perfect holiday for a little boy drawn to cattle.

He Speaks in a Baby's Cry

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”  St. John 1:18

God speaks to His people.  This is where all Biblical religion begins, with a God who knows us and who addresses us, who wishes us to know Him and the truth about Him.  He has spoken, our Epistle lesson says, “at sundry times and in divers manners.” 

All things began with His speaking, “let there be,” and it was—by the Word, Saint John assures us, “everything was made that was made.”  God speaks through the creation itself—in vistas that take our breaths away, in the ordered progression of sun and moon, in the complex laws of nature.  The heavens tell His glory, the Psalmist assures us,[1] and all things return the cry, “bless the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.[2]”

God speaks in the conscience, our common faculty for knowing right and wrong, that “light that enlightens every man that comes into the world.”  He speaks through our deepest longings and highest aspirations, our yearning to know that which is noblest and best, and to be united with it.  He speaks in our desire to love others, in our search for deep stillness, in our persistent sense of justice.