WHY WAS JESUS NOT BORN IN VERSAIILES ?

On what shall we meditate? A question, many put to themselves, making it look as though it is a huge, and impossible question to answer. Lying back in bed, before going to sleep; sitting down under a tree in the countryside; in front of the Blessed Eucharist at church; wherever we are, let’s just think about one person, whom I wish to imitate in life, a Saint, and then the ideas associate themselves … and, ultimately, solve our problem (if, it is a problem).

As a case in point, let that one person be none other than Jesus Christ. During these days, just before Christmas, I can’t help not thinking about His Birth. It is worth considering that Jesus, notwithstanding His being the Son of God, was born, not in a mansion, with servant running about spreading the news of a new-born prince, or in a palace, a castle … the Austrian type of castles of magical beauty, or in the Palace of Versailles. That would be very fitting for the Son of the King of kings.

But, had that happened, He would have gone against His own Mission, His programme and Mission Statement. First of all, He was refused shelter even from a lowly inn. We do read it in the Gospel, in His own Biography: “There was no place in the inn.” Shame upon the Betlehemites, shame upon humanity in general. Imagine the President of the United States asking for shelter from the night for his pregnant wife, and being turned out. “I would have given him my own bedroom,” many would say. And so say all of us.

But, as for Jesus, NO. A definite, categorical NO. He, the Author of life, the Creator of the Universe, the Owner of the Universe had to be born (as Fulton Sheen aptly puts it), under the earth; in a cave.
Let us fast wind forward thirty-three whole years and imagine, meditate on Jesus, giving us a reason why He was not born in the rich, magnificent luxury of Versailles Palace, Buckingham Palace or in one of the fairy wonder Castles of Austria. He offered Himself as the Sacrificial Lamb, for you and for me, not under the earth, where he was born, but on top of the earth, on top of a mountain, Golgotha.

He was born under the ground and He died on top of a mountain. Some ‘Food for Thought’. So during His sojourn on earth, Jesus must have experienced from the basest to the highest points in life. This shows us that notwithstanding His type of death, He was Master of all He surveyed. We find this, again in His Biography, the Gospel: “When I am lifted up, I shall draw all men to me.” He has experienced all the highways and low ways, all the nooks and corners of humanity.

For this reason no one can point his finger at Jesus and say: “Well, you don’t know what it means, you are in heaven, you are not living in this drudgery and misery.” HE has lived all the traumatic experiences, we all pass through in our life, all the experiences of the exiled, all those who are outlawed from society … remember, He was born in the filthiest of places; in a stable. How would you like your wife to give birth to your baby in a stable?

He grew up in Nazareth, an outcast of the Roman occupancy. Remember what His friend Philip said in His Biography: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Yes, let us meditate, think and reflect on these things and many others. And let us not ask any more that commonly asked question: “But, why was Jesus born in a cave?” Now we know the reason why.