"Who can ever dream of the love of the Father and the Son?" ~Fr. Frederick William Faber, D.D.
"Bethlehem was not his first home. We must seek him in an eternal home, if indeed he be older than the angels, the eldest-born of creatures. The dark cave within and the moonlit slope without are not like the scenery of his everlasting home. He is the Eternal Word. He is the first Word ever spoken, and he was spoken by God, and he is in all things equal to him by whom he was spoken. He was uttered from eternity, uttered without place to utter him in, without sound accompanying the utterance, and the Father who uttered him, or rather who is forever uttering him, is not prior to the Word he utters. His home has no scenery, no walls, no shape, no form, no color, no spot which can be loved with a local love....It is the Bosom of the Father. 1 ~Fr. Faber
"He is unbegotten. He is not a word whom any one could utter; for there is no one to utter him, and he is besides adorably unutterable." ~Fr. Faber
"He is an expression of all the Father's perfections." ~Fr. Faber
It was around him that all angelic history was grouped." ~Fr. Faber
"...neither Nazareth nor Bethlehem were his beginnings. He was eternal years old the moment he was born." -Fr. Faber
"We shall see more at Bethlehem than we can understand; and even what we cannot understand will fill us full of love, and it is love which makes us wise unto salvation." ~Fr. Faber
"The Father knows himself, and by his knowledge of himself the Son is born amid the splendors of uncreated holiness, amid the inconceivable jubilations of the divine perfections." ~Fr. Faber
"Jesus makes heaven, wherever he is, whether it be in the tabernacle, or in the heart of the communicant, just as he took the Beatific Vision with him into limbus when he died, and turned the pensive shadows of the patriarchs' home into the full glow of heaven. 1 ~ Fr. Faber
"...the contemplation of his grandeurs is not merely a joy. It is something beyond an ennobling ocupation. It does an actual work in our souls, and a work which the grace of perseverance can make immortal." 1 ~ Fr. Faber"For every thing in Jesus is not only saintly, but sanctifying also, and imprints itself on the souls which apply themselves to the consideration of it, if they do so with good dispositions." 1 ~ Fr. Faber
An image from the pew. Sources:
1. Fr. Frederick William Faber, D.D. , Bethlehem (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978), p. 11.
Quotes taken from Bethlehem by Fr. Faber.
Photos taken at Ss. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Roman Catholic Church, Sterling Heights, Michigan, U.S.A.