The Inn & the Stable: A Meditation for 2025 Aided by Fulton Sheen

The scene is ancient Israel, which anticipates a messiah and a revolution more than a century and a half after the purification of the second Temple. The wife of a young family is mysteriously pregnant, and her husband is confused and overwhelmed. Late in the pregnancy, the two are commanded by the political powers-that-be to make a journey of roughly seventy-five miles from their home, during the chilly and wet season of the year, to the capital city for a census.

And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:7)

This scene offers rich fodder for meditation throughout the (yet-complete) Christmas season and into the nascent calendar year. More specifically, when we ponder some of the phrases employed by St. Luke the Evangelist, we notice a deeper truth, one that applies readily to our lives twenty centuries later.

The Gospel author tells us that “there was no place for them in the inn.” Because modern motel chains did not exist, this family would have been seeking refuge with extended family in the local area. Yet, they were consistently turned away. Perhaps this was due to an overwhelming number of familial visitors to Bethlehem, the City of David; or perhaps this Holy Family had been shunned by relatives who misunderstood their circumstances, considering only the superficial details. In any case, a manger, a feeding stable for the animals, was the only place available. Surely, it was not nearly as warm and dry as the guest room where the more favored relatives boarded, thus highlighting the detail about the child being swaddled.

Venerable Fulton Sheen extended this very idea in the second chapter of his magnus opus, Life of Christ, and applied it to the lives of modern humans.

There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born—if He was to be born at all—in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it. (16-17)

The emphasis on the last sentence was to drive home the bishop’s primary point: God will make Himself most fully present in the details and scenarios that seem most unlikely. That is the deepest truth of the Christmas message that each of us needs to keep with us constantly.

As a reader reflects on this stark contrast drawn by Sheen, several scenarios found in our modern world come into sharp focus. Sheen’s description of the inn as the locus of urbane, cosmopolitan life might cause a reader to conjure visions of the cosmopolitan lives of Wall Street investors, Hollywood producers and actors, or even lobbyists and politicians in Washington. Yet, most of us do not live and make our daily choices in those metaphorical inns. Rather, the humble settings of the local grocery store, bank, and elementary school lobby are far more real to most of us. Even though they have far less fanfare, the mundane settings are precisely the places where we can bring the incarnate presence of Emmanuel to others who may have been forgotten, ignored, or cast out.

Moving still deeper, we should take the opportunity to examine how our respective slender slices of the world exhibit these contrasting realities. For many of us, there exists a clear distinction between our work life and life at home. Very likely, work is the place where we deal with “the world’s moods,” in Sheen’s words, or where we rendezvous with those who are popular or successful in our own limited personal realms. Family life, on the other hand, might be the setting where some of us feel under-appreciated. Or, perhaps, some of us are so consumed with the success or pressure of work that we forget, ignore, or cast out those who have been entrusted to our care. We must ask ourselves if we relegate our spouses, children, or neighbors to the proverbial stables because of inconvenient or uncomfortable circumstances.

Our basic social interactions also have potential to be deeply affected by the contrast identified by St. Luke and the venerable bishop. This is especially true with the proliferation of social media throughout our culture. The platforms we use are, without a doubt, the “gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly….” All of us are tempted to share the parts of our lives that are beautiful, sensational, and happy, often hiding the reality that we are hanging on to health and sanity by the grace of God and the skin of our teeth. Are we willing to recognize and admit that our lives, on balance, look more like stables than they look like four-star hotels?

Each of the scenarios considered above boils down to a single reality. At bottom, they happen because many, if not most, of us are focused on popularity and influence instead of accepting anonymity and challenging conditions. In every case, wealth, pleasure, power, and honor distract us from the life of holiness through which the Lord desires to bless and enrich our lives. This recognition could be quite beneficial for all of us as we begin the pilgrimage of this newborn year.

Spending time meditating on the contrast between the inn and the stable has identified one reality, ultimately. I, too, am deeply influenced by the world’s moods, by public opinion, by the desire for popularity and influence. Like the Holy Family of Nazareth, and like so many holy men and women through the ages, I need to be relegated to the stable sometimes, and I need to become comfortable in that. I need to find the divine grace and blessing where I least expect it: in being outcast, ignored, forgotten by the world. In that, I can meet the Incarnate Outcast more fully. I am sure 2025 will present opportunities for just that. I only pray for the grace to see those opportunities as gifts.

Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash