On social media (Facebook, Instagram, and X) this past week I delved into some of my favourite quotes about the Nativity, including the Feast of the Holy Family today:

At Christmas we contemplate God made man, divine glory hidden beneath the poverty of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; the Creator of the Universe reduced to the helplessness of an infant. Once we accept this paradox, we discover the Truth that sets us free and the Love that transforms our lives. On Bethlehem Night, the Redeemer becomes one of us, our companion along the precarious paths of history. Let us take the hand which he stretches out to us: it is a hand which seeks to take nothing from us, but only to give. — Pope Benedict XVI, Urbi et Orbi 2005

In giving himself in Jesus, this child, the Love of God takes us in the singularity of our existence; the Love of God becomes credible… In this only Son and because there is only one Jesus born in Bethlehem of Judea at a determinate time in history… unique as son of Mary, singular and fragile like every man, like any man, God reveals in just what way he loves us: each and individually, in the singularity of our existence, unique and fragile. — Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger

The very little Jesus of Bethlehem: it is him whom the world is missing. And if we find him, we will have sweetness and littleness and love… Pride will break before the crèche… One must truly bend over to understand and love such a little child. — Little Sister Madgeleine of Jesus

How can he whose heart is given to the Infant Jesus bring himself to care for pomp and show? For those who love one another grow to resemble one another.” — Saint John of Avila

The incarnation of the Word in a human family, in Nazareth, by its very newness changed the history of the world. We need to enter into the mystery of Jesus’ birth… We then need to peer into those thirty long years when Jesus earned his keep by the work of his hands, reciting the traditional prayers and expressions of his people’s faith and coming to know that ancestral faith until he made it bear fruit in the mystery of the Kingdom. This is the mystery of Christmas and the secret of Nazareth, exuding the beauty of family life! It was this that so fascinated Francis of Assisi, Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and Charles de Foucauld, and continues to fill Christian families with hope and joy. — Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia 65