This poem is far from the typical sweet, innocent Christmas images we're used to. It mixes the ideas of the little baby born to Mary, His boundless love, His immense pain, and the extraordinary gift of self from Him to us. It serves as a reminder that His really is the most important birth and death, and perhaps could be an inspiration for each of us to strive to know, love, and serve Him even deeper and more fully in the coming years...
The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell, SJ
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45183/the-burning-babe
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