It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this world as the miracles of divine love.  We think of the power, the justice, the judgment of God as visible in this world’s history; but these are but the instruments of love, and all that He does has its foundation in love and receives its impulse from love.  This Nativity is the divine love coming into the world on its last adventure, determined to win man, all other means failing, by the extremity of sacrifice.  The final word about this Child will be that having loved his own He loved them unto the uttermost, he loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity of love.  Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared for the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the instruments of His love.  He shares Himself.  He pours Himself into human life.  He takes men into partnership in the work of redemption.  Whenever a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool in God’s hands.  The progress of the Church—­of God’s Kingdom—­might be described as the accumulation of these tools wherewith God works—­souls who are so devoted to Him as to be the medium of bringing His power, the power of love, to bear on the souls of their brethren.

To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son.  She is the most complete human embodiment of God’s love.  She, in her perfect purity, can transmit that love as power with the least loss of energy in the process of transmission.  When we think of the saints as the means of God’s action, we think of blessed Mary as the highest of the saints and the means most perfectly adapted to God’s ends.  Here at Bethlehem she holds God in her arms and looks into the human face that He has taken for this present work and all her being is absorbed in love.  Oblivious, we think her, of her mean surroundings, of the animals that share with her their stable, of the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of S. Joseph standing by in sympathy.  Love is all.  Love is a passion consuming her being—­what can the attendant circumstances matter?  And to-day, after all these centuries:  to-day the Child is the Ascended and Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Majesty of God.  And Mary, the Mother?  Can we have any other thought than that she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the face of her Baby, still, to-day, looks up into the face of her divine Son, and the look is the same look of love?  And can we think of the look that comes back to her from eyes that are human, taken from her body, though they be in very truth the eyes of God—­can we think, I say, of the eyes of her Child and her God bringing anything else than the message of love?  Can we think that when in answer to our invocation she presents our prayers in union with her own, that love will fail?