Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger

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Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger  Biography
It is not uncommon for us parents to presume that the learning relationship between us and our children is one way. We teach and they learn. I know that this has been the case for me over the years.
But this teacher-student relationship is not absolute between parents and their children.
Parents should always be mindful that we can learn so much from our children.
I have been reminded of this in a poignant way during these weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas.
My young sons have shown me how many chances we have each day to make the ordinary daily hardships we are forced to bear into sweet prayers to our Lord.
They have also reminded me how taking some initiative and coming up with small sacrifices on our own can help us bear those little and big crosses—such as illnesses, job loss or bearing with annoying co-workers or relatives—that are imposed upon us.
In the process, my boys have put me to shame, showing me how often I fail to do even little things for God.
During Advent, my wife, Cindy, has encouraged our sons to remember the little sacrifices they make during each day. At supper, we go around the table and tell each other what they were.
One of my sons mentioned eating food served to him at a meal that he really didn’t like. Another mentioned letting one of his brothers play with a toy that he really wanted to play with.
Nothing huge in the grand scheme of things, but hopefully it is opening the eyes of my boys’ hearts to the spiritual possibilities that surround them every moment of every day, and strengthening their will to actually choose to take advantage of them.
When our boys are ready for their bedtime prayers, we will have them take one yellow piece of yarn for each of their sacrifices that day and lay them in a small basket we have put into a Nativity set. They thus become another piece of straw that they put into the manger to make the baby Jesus’ bed that much softer for him.
In a more profound way, this wonderful practice that Cindy heard about from some friends has taught me, through my boys, that gaining a new perspective on our sufferings and drawing closer to Christ through them can be a great gift we can receive from God at Christmas.
In our culture, we tend to flee from all suffering to a fault. Yes, we can freely do all that we morally can to alleviate our own suffering. And it is a commendable thing to lessen the hardships of others.
But it is impossible in this life to eliminate all suffering. So it is good for us to find ways to make our crosses meaningful and even, with the help of grace, to see them as blessings.
One way to do that is to bear suffering for the good of others. So often, we can make the days of other people around us easier by going out of our way to serve them and be pleasant to them.
When we do that, we are being like my boys. We are making the manger that much softer for the baby Jesus.
So often, our culture leads us to be overly sentimental when we think about the scene of Christ’s birth.
But, if you think about it, Jesus, Mary and Joseph had it pretty rough in that cave that served as a stable outside of Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
Yet, what happened there continues to be Good News for all humanity.
And in this life, in which at least some degree of suffering is unavoidable, part of that Good News is that God can transform our daily crosses into his eternal glory. †

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Pictures Of Baby Jesus In Manger 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures

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Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures  Biography
Christmas is here! Today is by far one of my favorite days of the year. Yes, today! The 24th! That’s the day we Colombians celebrate the coming of baby Jesus and the opening of awesome gifts.
I love Jesus, nativity scenes, Christmas and Christmas trees. And by love, I mean LOVE! As some of you may know I’m in my last year of grad school – and hopefully of school period! Throughout the years I have become a professinal procrastinator when it comes to school work (don’t tell my professors). A couple of weeks ago I was supposed to be writing my final paper. It was a total monster and I had no desire to tackle it. So at midnight, technically on the day that it was due, I decided to do a photoshoot of baby Jesus, cause really, he is quite precious. So here are some of the photos that I took while procrastinating on my paper. Cause really, photos are prettier than papers.
I wish you get to spend this incredible day (or tomorrow) with your family and loved ones. And while the gifts are great, food is good and family is simply amazing, I pray we take some time to remember the true meaning of this day. Cause as cheesy as it sounds, Jesus is the reason for the season.
Merry Christmas, friends!
Some photos of the tree!
ust under 34 days until Christmas, the Pope has put a dampener on the festive period by rubbishing the idea that donkeys or any other animal have a place in the traditional nativity scene.
Benedict XVI also claims angels never sang to the shepherds to proclaim Christ birth's - trashing the much-loved carol 'Hark! The herald angels sing' in the process.
From this falsehood the tradition of singing carols was born, the Pope says.
His views are revealed in his latest and last installment of three volumes on the life of Jesus, released today, which is set to be a worldwide bestseller.
Traditional: This depiction of the Nativity is mirrored in homes and churches all over the world at Christmas but the Pope says that it should not include a single animal
Almost every Christian church in the world will soon be blowing the dust off its traditional nativity set with its array of animals but the Pope is clear that it would not have included any beast whatsoever.
St Peter's Square itself regularly has a giant scene at Christmas and has displayed an array of animals at the heart of the Vatican, but the Pontiff is certain that is wrong.
'In the gospels there is no mention of animals,’ he writes, saying that they were probably a Hebrew invention of the seventh century BC, as outlined in the Book of Habakkuk.
Habakkuk was the eighth book of 12 minor prophets in the Old Testament.
In Christian tradition, he is regarded by some as a prophet who predicted the nativity.
Tears at Synod as Church says surprise 'No' to women bishops: Knife-edge vote causes massive rift
Scenes relating to the birth of Jesus, as described in the Gospel, do not directly refer to the presence of an ox and donkey.
But in Habakkuk 3:2, it is written: 'In the midst of the two beasts wilt thou be known' - and this was one of the sources which inspired the presence of the creatures at the manger.
(It is worth noting that another Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, also inspired the manger scenery, with his words from 1:3: 'The ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger').
However, the Pope is convinced despite debunking the theory, the tradition is here to stay, saying: 'No nativity scene will give up its ox and donkey', he said.
Claims: The Pontiff, pictured in Rome this week, attempts to debunk myths about Christ's life in his new book which forms part of a trilogy
Wrong: Even St Peter's Square has a giant Nativity scene at Christmas (pictured), complete with animals, but the Pope says this idea of Christ surrounded by donkeys, oxen and sheep is a seventh century invention
'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives,' hits bookshops in 50 countries on Wednesday, the third and final installment of a project the 85-year-old Benedict conceived a decade ago and began writing soon after he became pope in 2005.
The first two books, which topped the bestseller lists in Italy, dealt with Jesus' public ministry and his death, leaving just Jesus' birth to complete the series.
More than 1 million copies are planned for the initial print run, just in time for Christmas.
In the book, Benedict blends history, theology, linguistics and even astronomy to interpret the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which describe the months just before and after Jesus' birth.
But there is one part of the nativity story he is firm on - that Mary was a virgin and Christ was conceived with the Holy Spirit alone.
In the section 'Virgin Birth - Myth or Historical Truth?' he says: 'The accounts of Matthew and Luke are not myths taken a stage further.
'They are firmly rooted, in terms of their basic conception, in the biblical tradition of God the Creator and Redeemer.'
Publication: The third volume of the Jesus Trilogy by Pope Benedict XVI is released in bookshops around the world today
Author: Pope Benedict XVI holds a special copy of his controversial book as he meets publishers at the Vatican
But he added that Angels delivered to good news of Jesus's birth to shepherds by speaking them, not singing them as the gospels say.
'According to the evangelist, the angels "said" this,' the Pope writes, adding: 'But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present.
'To this day simple believers join in their caroling on the Holy Night, proclaiming in song the great joy that, from then until the end of time, is bestowed on all people.'
And he also admits that Jesus would have been born years earlier than the Christian calendar states.
For years, many historians have said Jesus would have been born around 4BC, but for the Pope to admit a flaw in something so fundamental to Catholic faith is surprising.
Pope Benedict was born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in Marktl, Germany, in 1927.
As a 14-year-old during World War Two, he was forced into the Hitler Youth, even though his Bavarian parents despised the Third Reich.
He was appointed the head of the Roman Catholic Church in April 2005.
Last month, he delivered a prayer in Arabic for the first time during his weekly general audience.
More than 20,000 people heard the Pope's prayers in Arabic, part of a new effort by the Vatican to show support for Christians in the Middle East.
THE MYTH OF NATIVITY, ACCORDING TO THE POPE... AND DID THREE WISE MEN RIDE ON CAMELS TO THE MANGER?

Three wise men make their way to the manger... or did they?
In the latest instalment of his book series, Pope Benedict XVI has this to say on the subject of the birth of Jesus...
NO DONKEY: No donkeys or any other animal have a place in the traditional nativity scene - they were a 7th century BC Hebrew invention, relating to the Book of Habakkuk.
Habakkuk was the eighth book of 12 minor prophets in the Old Testament. In Christian tradition, he is regarded by some as a prophet who predicted the nativity.
Scenes relating to the birth of Jesus, as described in the Gospel, do not directly refer to the presence of an ox and donkey.
But in Habakkuk 3:2, it is written: 'In the midst of the two beasts wilt thou be known' - and this was one of the sources which inspired the presence of the creatures at the manger.
(It is worth noting that another Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, also inspired the manger scenery, with his words from 1:3: 'The ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger').
NO SINGING ANGELS: Angels never sang tthe shepherds to proclaim Christ's birth - they just spoke, according to Pope Benedict. And it is from this falsehood the tradition of singing carols was born. Three' wise men and other myths about the birth of Jesus
Accordinto the Bible, three wise men from the east travelled a great distance on camels and followed a star to Bethlehem to visit baby Jesus in the manger - bringing with them gifts. However, hardly any of these details are actually in the holy book...
In Mathew 2:1, it is written: 'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem...'
HOW MANY WISE MEN? Matthew's Gospel doenot reveal the exact number. But because Matthew 2:11 mentions three gifts - '... they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh' - it is widely held that there were three wise men.
WERE THEY KINGS? They were probably learned men, such as astrologers.
WHAT WERE THEY CALLED? The three often cited were supposedly called Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. But these names are said to have first been recorded in a Greek manuscript 500 years after the birth of Jesus.

                                          Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Baby Jesus Christmas Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures

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Black Baby Jesus Pictures Biography
Of the numerous aliases of late Wu-Tang Clan rap artist Old Dirty Bastard, there is one significant to this entry, “Black Baby Jesus.” I figured he gave himself that name for laughs, but I wonder if he knew, before his unfortunate death in 2004, that there was actually an annual festival in honor of Black Baby Jesus in the Philippines.
The origin of the Ati-atihan Festival of Kalibo, and all its sibling festivals of different monikers in other towns, is the celebration of the acquiring of Panay Island from the black tribespeople of Borneo.  As un-PC as it sounds to the Westerner, people go out in black face or full black body paint and dance in the streets to celebrate their black aboriginal heritage.  The Catholic Church thought it was a pagan ritual that took attention away from their expanding religion and put a spin on the festival early on, preaching that it was actually a festival to celebrate Santo Niño, Jesus Christ as a child.  Combine the two origins of the festival and you have a party that celebrates a statue of baby Jesus in black face make-up.
In the city of Iloilo where the party is called Dinagyang, festivities wouldn’t officially start until a few days, but the big to-do in town was the rehearsal parade, a town-wide event just as big.
“WHEN ARE WE LEAVING FOR ILOILO?” I asked Tita Josie that morning in our Guimaras bungalow.
“Today is Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, I thought it was Thursday.” It’s amazing how travel can make you loose all concept of date and time; she thought we’d have an extra day to see more blue-signed sites in Guimaras, but that would have to be cut short if we were going to see any of the pre-Dinagyang festivities that afternoon back on Panay.
After packing up, we ventured via tricycle to the Guisi Point lighthouses, which weren’t much to see themselves, although they looked out to a scenic bay that sort of made the trip worthwhile.  The tricycle driver then took us to the town of Jordan for a quick bowl of batchoy to prepare our stomachs for oysters — “It’s not good to eat talaba when you’re hungry,” Tita Josie said — and then we hopped on a ferry boat to take us the ten minutes back to Panay.
“Where is Larry?” Tita Josie asked.  She had called our trusty taxi driver we met before for a pick-up so that we could go out for lunch.  It wasn’t too hard to spot him and soon we were in the air-conditioned comfort of his Tata company car on the way back to Nato & Helen’s restaurant.  Having skipped breakfast aside from that batchoy stomach primer, I was all set for a final splurge on oysters before leaving the oyster land.  We started off with four kilos of fresh oysters, steamed — although, like Old Dirty Bastard a.k.a. Black Baby Jesus once said, “I like it raw… Ooh baby, I like it raw...” as well.  Without a doubt, they were the tastiest, most plump oysters I’ve ever had I must say — and we ultimately ordered three more kilos.  My favorite ones were the “super oysters;” five or more oysters clustered and stuck together with five shells and five pieces of meat.  Of the seven kilos (that only cost about five bucks), half of that went into my stomach — the world truly was my oyster, if only for half an hour.
THE STREETS WERE COMING ALIVE AROUND MID-AFTERNOON for the Dinagyang rehearsal parade.  We head over to the main cathedral where the parade began, with the replica of the original Black Baby Jesus (picture above) being transferred to a parade float.  For those who were too far away to see the holy statue, there was a big dress-up Black Baby Jesus waving to the crowds.  Some uptight Catholics might have found this just wrong, but perhaps they just need to sit down and watch Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma, which theorizes that Jesus was black anyway.
Group by group, different competing tribes marched down the street from the church to the grand bandstand full of people, dancing to the infectious rhythms of their drummers and xylophone players.  It was no Wu-Tang Clan, but pretty good anyway.  Although the parade was merely a rehearsal for the big fully-costumed one later on, each participant represented his/her team in uniforms of his/her tribe’s colors for a sense of unity, and above all, fashion.  It seemed the competition was not just for dance but for dress, each tribe trying to outdo the others with matching garb ranging from tribal to slick, flamboyant to cool.
With Black Baby Jesus leading the way, along with some tribal mascots, the teams proceeded down the street, each with a choreographed routine that was sometimes tribal dance, sometimes African-American fraternity step show, sometimes a little bit of both.  For one of the final groups to march the parade route, a tribe showed up wearing nothing flashy at all.  They were dressed in plain clothes, each one wearing a Muslim-like
headdress made out of an old t-shirt rag.
What can this tribe possibly do to outdo the others? I thought.
They blew me and everyone else away of course, as underdogs always do, with a crazy acrobatic routine that involved bamboo sticks and somersaults in the air.  Guys lifted girls up and twirled them around, while others twirled around from bamboo sticks like Chinese acrobats.  Old Dirty Bastard a.k.a. Black Baby Jesus would have been proud — assuming he was alive and wasn’t high or running from the police, that is.
THE MINIVANS WERE FULL and we had missed the last public Ceres Liner bus back to Kalibo, so Larry the taxi driver took us all the way back to Kalibo for a fee that we split with three other guys in the same situation.  Upon arrival in Kalibo’s main plaza, the streets were just dying down from their own rehearsal parade, but the real deal would happen the following morning — tribes, costumes, drummers, Black Baby Jesuses and all.

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Black Baby Jesus Pictures 

Baby Jesus Crib

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Baby Jesus Crib  Biography
I highly encourage you to click over to the Vatican website today and read the Pope's homily from the Midnight Mass this last week for Christmas. Many newspapers covered his homily, but their summaries did not do justice to what is one of the most accessible and straightforward messages of his that I can remember.
He begins by pondering something which has also been pummeling me: the wonder of God as an infant, cradled and nurtured in the arms of His human mother Mary. As anyone who has fallen in love with their baby can attest, the mother's adoration is mixed with awe, and also demands/compels her to respond to the infant. Likewise, the infant gazes at the mother, clinging to her with trust and vulnerability that his love will not be lost on her or render Him abandoned. Just imagine that that is how God wants to be with us.
Again and again the beauty of this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is the splendour of truth. Again and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and love me.
I mentioned this in a status update on Facebook yesterday also.
Our family spent Advent in the Byzantine tradition of the Phillip's Fast and I experienced in a new way the joys of surrendering to God and witnessing how He reveals Himself, especially in my work setting. Then, right at the very end of Advent--indeed, on Christmas Eve--I blew it, big time.
As ever, with these somewhat vague posts about confession, I won't be specific about what this sin entailed. (This is my blog, after all, not the confessional.) But I knew I needed to get to confession, and thankfully, our priest agreed to hear my confession even in the last hours prior to the late night Liturgy on Christmas Eve.
As soon as I confessed to him, he responded with: "Oh--It's been a long time since you've had to confess this."
To convey the unassuming beauty of that statement, I should tell you honestly that I had despair about this particular situation and didn't want to voice aloud to anyone, especially my beloved priest, the truth of my failings. I was feeling simultaneously proud and embarrassed, while knowing that these stupid emotions would not do one thing to change the situation. Deep down I trusted and believed that, once I had the chance to confess, the benefits to my soul would be real and my communion with God would be restored. My Lord's mercy is never-failing.
But getting over those stumbling blocks of my ego and pride required grace and love conquering fear--a fear which comes directly from Satan. Also, perhaps you can relate to that frantic search for any number of ways to get out of the confession. Then, I imagined Father refusing me absolution and then me getting killed in a car accident. (okay, this is slightly irrational but, as Scripture teaches, there are sins which lead to death, as stated in 1 John 5:16). Thankfully, He extended this grace as I swung through these many irrational thought processes.
When Father responded in that way: "It's been a long time--" I marveled in retrospect at the mercy of that sentiment. It simultaneously conveyed to me that 1) the Lord's grace has been effective in my life since the last time I dealt with this sin, and 2) I'm not telling him some new and terrible and shocking thing. Father knows me, just as my Lord knows me. He knows me better than anybody. And so I fell into the arms of his mercy, and His Mercy, and received the grace of the Mystery of Penance. Praise the Lord.
But backing up, how to overcome those stumbling blocks long enough to drive the car to Father and unload this embarrassing issue before him?
Come, Baby Jesus. During this Christmas seasonI couldn't help but ponder thimplications and reality of Goentering into the human experience as an infant.
Seriously, the human infant is among the most captivating yet vulnerable and non-threatening creatures in existence. In my heart, I crawled toward His crib and experienced firsthand the grace of God Who condescended in such a way that we can approach Him without fear. I imagined Him hearing my sins and loving me anyway. I imagined this all the way along the highway and through downtown, until safely pulling into the Church.
Welcome, Baby Jesus. We are so glad, so deeply glad, that You are here.
After listening to many Christmas songs, presentations and stories about the birth of Christ, I am convinced that the church has come up with a third account on the birth of Jesus Christ. The other two accounts are found in the gospels of St. Luke and Matthew. Other books in the New Testament just allude or mention the birth of Christ implicitly in their records.
As we celebrate Christmas, we must understand the Bible ourselves so as to grasp the true account of Christ’s birth. In order to understand the birth of Christ in a better way, one must start by reading the account according to St. Luke (Luke 2:1-40), and then merge it with the account as in Matthew.
The account by St. Luke does not mention the wise men; it talks of the shepherds only (Luke 2:8-20). Immediately Christ was born in Bethlehem, when Joseph and Mary went for census, the shepherds on the nearby fields were alerted by an angel on the good tidings about the birth of a king in the town of David. They were to find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger (2:12, NIV). They narrated to Mary and Joseph about the things they were told about the child by the angels and they left.
Immediately after this visit, Christ is circumcised in the eighth day and named Jesus; the name given to him before he was conceived. After the circumcision, time passed and it came a time when according to the Law of Moses, Jesus had to be presented as the first born for consecration. Joseph and Mary took the child to Jerusalem, from Bethlehem where Simeon presented the child to the temple.
The account of Matthew picks from there (Matthew 2:1-23) and starts as “after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of king Herod, magi (wise men) from the east came to Jerusalem…” (2:1, NIV). The wise men were led by a star and enquired from King Herod about the newly born king. In turn, Heroenquired from chief priests about the birth of Christ and was advised that he was to be born in Bethlehem. King Herod releases the wise men and requests them to come back after finding where Jesus was, so that he could go and worship him.
When they left, they were led by a star and “on coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshipped him… (2:11a, NIV) and presented him with gifts they had carried.
In this case, although Herod send them to Bethlehem, it is not clear whether the star that reappeared to them led them to Bethlehem or some other place within Jerusalem. With the Luke account in mind, it was most likely that Jesus was still in Jerusalem, where he was presented to the temple by his parents, on their way to back to Nazareth.
Immediately the wise men left, Joseph was shown in a dream to take the child to Egypt. Time passed and Herod would realize that he was duped by the wise men when they never returned. Out of fury, he ordered all the children in Bethlehem and its surrounding from 2 years and below to be killed “…in accordance with the time he had learnt from the wise men” (2:16b, NIV). This is an indication that Herod ordered the murder approximately two years from the birth of Christ.
One clear thing in these accounts is that the wise men did not visit Christ, immediately he was born; they visited him after he was circumcised, consecrated to the lord and probably outside Bethlehem.
This is different from what I was taught in Sunday school, and what I usually teach my Sunday school kids where the birth of Christ is presented consistently without regard to time factor. Even the pictures on the birth of Christ in a manger are accompanied by the wise men and shepherds, Mary and Joseph all looking at baby Jesus. Although this way the story appears consistent and easier to understand for children, the storyline is doctored to avoid inconsistencies. Whoever decided to doctor the story, whether the church or theologians has created a third account of the birth of Christ and has succeeded in making the world believe it.
As we celebrate Christmas, let us read the Bible and grasp the truth. However, remember what matters is not which account is true or accurate, what matters is the understanding that Christ’s birth, calls for our love for one another. Christmas is a time to care and share what we have, show compassion, forgiveness and ensure we are ambassadors of peace, love and thus we will be united in the body of Christ. I wish all my readers Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2013.

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Crib 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards

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Baby Jesus Christmas Cards  Biography
At its heartwarming core, Christmas is the story of a birth: the tender relationship between a new mother and her newborn child.
Indeed, that maternal bond between the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus has resonated so deeply across the centuries that depicting the blessed intimacy of the first Noel has become an integral part of the Christmas industry.
Yet all the familiar scenes associated with the holy family today — creches and church pageants, postage stamps, and holiday cards — are also missing an obvious element of the mother-child connection that modern Christians are apparently happy to do without: a breast-feeding infant.
Jesus certainly wasn’t a bottle baby. So what happened to Mary’s breasts? It’s a centuries-old story, but one that has a relatively brief answer: namely, the rise of the printinpress in 15th-century Europe.
With the advent of movable type, historians say, came the ability to mass-market pornography, which promoted the sexualization of women’s bodies in the popular imagination. What's more, the printing press enabled the wider circulation of anatomical drawings for medical purposes, which in turn contributed to the demystification of the body. Both undermined traditional views of the body as a reflection of the divine.
The other major consequence of this new technology, of course, was the mass-marketing of the Bible and the rise of a Protestantism that encouraged a focus on the text of the Scriptures and discouraged the use of images and “Catholic” practices like devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints.
The cultural shift was so great that even Catholics soon came to regard the breast as an “inappropriate” image for churches. Instead, the sacrifice of the cross — the suffering Jesus — became the dominant motif of Christianity while the Nativity was sanitized into a Hallmark card.
“Ask anybody in the street what’s the primary Christian symbol and they would say the crucifixion,” said Margaret Miles, author of A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750, a book that traces the disappearance of the image of the breast-feeding Mary after the Renaissance.
“It was the takeover of the crucifixion as the major symbol of God’s love for humanity” that supplanted the breast-feeding icon, she said. And thawas a decisive shift from the earliest days of Christianity when “the virgin’s nursing breast, the lactating virgin, was the primary symbol of God’s love for humanity.”
In fact, the oldest known image of the Virgin Mary is from a third-century fresco in a Roman catacomb that shows the infant Jesus suckling at her exposed breast.
From those early traces, the motif of Maria Lactans, as it is called in Latin, became increasingly popular — and increasingly graphic — an illustration of what the Catholic writer Sandra Miesel called “the shocking fleshiness of our faith.”
By the Middle Ages, the breast-feeding Mary was shown in every possible context, and “lactation miracles” and “milk shrines” proliferated across the Christian world. Mary was “the wet-nurse of salvation,” as one phrase had it, offering holy succor to communities exposed to the vagaries of war and disease. Some images of St. Bernard of Clairvaux even show him kneeling in prayer before a statue of Mary, who is squirting breast milk onto his eager lips.
It was all deeply moving to believers of the day, though perhaps too much of a good thing even then. Miesel says that a century before the Reformation, St. Bernardine of Siena quipped that “Mary must have given more milk than a hundred cows.”
Yet once the breast became an object of medical and sexual interest, it quickly vanished as an object of sacred desire.
Miles said she found no religious paintings of a breast-feeding Mary after 1750, even as exposed breasts became a common feature of classical, non-Christian paintings, like Liberty Leading the People, which commemorates the French Revolution, or the Roman woman Cimon breast-feeding her starving father.
So after all this secularization and sexualization can the breast make a comeback as a religious symbol?
The potential is there. Some conservatives a
Still, it’s hard to imagine Christmas cards of a baby Jesus at Mary’s breast arriving in mailboxes anytime soon.
Even as the number of breast-feeding mothers continues to grow, public breast-feeding is still a source of provocation more than consolation. Just recall the controversy that erupted last spring over the Time magazine cover that showed a 26-year-old mom breast-feeding her 3-year-old son — a portrait that was inspired by images of the Madonna and Child. And women who try to suckle their infants in church are often met with hard stares rather than a friendly welcome.
Whatever the obstacles, Miles thinks it would be a good thing for the culture, and Christianity, if Maria Lactans made at least a brief return to church — at Christmas or anytime.
“I think there should be a plethora of symbols of God’s love for humanity,” she said. “Can there be only one way to talk about so great a mystery? No, there can’t.”
David Gibson is an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker. He writes for RNS and until recently covered the religion beat for AOL's Politics Daily. He blogs at Commonweal magazine, and has written two books on Catholic topics, the latest a biography of Pope Benedict XVI. Via RNS.

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards 

Baby Jesus Christmas Cards