It is often said at Christmastime that Jesus is born into every heart. But these “births” must not make us forget the primordial, massive fact that Jesus was bornof Mary among a people that at the time were dominated by the greatest empire of the age.If we forget that, the birth of Jesus becomes an abstraction, a symbol, a cipher. Apart from its historical coordinates the event loses its meaning. To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation of littleness and service in the midst of the power and arrogance of the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable.
~ G. Gutiérrez (The God of Life, 1989)
