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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Fr Dermot Preston

Good morning.

A few years back, I found myself responsible for a small office Christmas Crib which sat on the mantlepiece in our meeting room. I also found that I was in possession of a small toy crocodile. It just happened to be the same size and in the same crouched repose as the ox and the ass. So, quietly, surreptitiously into the crib it went.

The only person in the office who really did not like the crocodile was my Superior, who on finding the croc at the manger would storm around making noises about lack of reverence and then pointedly remove the croc and fling it into some distant bin. Once he had gone off, Sr Mary, our saintly receptionist, with the tenacity of the US Marine Corps searching for a colleague fallen-in-battle, would track down the croc, pass it back to me and quietly, surreptitiously, back into the crib it went…

My persistence was partly devilment against my Superior, but there was also a real issue of why the croc could NOT be present? In the traditional crib scene, Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus are present with the Wise Men & the shepherds, and they are all found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke – but the ox & ass are not found in the Gospel story, being medieval devotions, probably from the time of St Francis of Assisi. So then, when you think about it, reptiles have as much right to be present in the Christmas crib as the ox and ass.

Lord help me with my prejudices this day. Let my decisions not be driven by my narrow-mindedness. Let me try to include, not exclude.

Amen.