The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead…He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands.¹ — GK Chesterton

With these words, Chesterton describes the interior transformation — one fired by humiliation — that took place inside of St. Francis of Assisi as he sat, imprisoned. His hopes and dreams of military success and the resultant fame had been overturned. Upended. Dashed onto the ground. Yet, amid the burning flames in this crucible, something began to change inside. Chesterton describes this as a kind of radical reversal and one that flipped Francis’ entire world on its head. He became a fool. And Chesterton knows he’s walking on holy ground where few have trod. “We cannot follow St. Francis to that final spiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete holiness or happiness, because we have never been there,” he says. Still he conjectures what this experience might have been like:

If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasize the idea of dependence. There is a Latin and literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging. It would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hung the world upon nothing. If St. Francis had seen, in one of his strange dreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a single detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round. But the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry of its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high citadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was turned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and more in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the psychological fact. St. Francis might love his little town as much as before, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered even in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep roofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a new and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being merely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would be thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars.²

From the cave, Francis gained a new way of seeing. He saw everything in a new light. He saw things, not from above, from a godlike, powerful position, but from below — as the completely dependent creature he was. In fact, from this position, he could see that all of creation was completely dependent. In effect, this shattered the illusion that he was in control of things. In his overturned world, he could see the more anxiously we anchor our ideas and plans to heavy structures of control, the faster those foundations will be ripped from the sky and the whole thing crash to the ground.

This brings us, fittingly, to Christmas, because God invites all of us to do a spiritual somersault at Christmas. If we let it, Christmas flips our way of seeing upside down. Why? Because in the Nativity of Our Lord, God reveals the truth of his power. It does not appear in a cosmic light show, rain of fire, or a reign of terror. It does not appear in a pillar of cloud and fire, or in the parting of a sea. No. God reveals his power in a helpless, dependent, and poor baby. He reveals his power in humble love. He reveals that the really powerful thing is not might or force or politics or wealth, but the complete and humble gift of self. The cosmic nothing — a poor baby born of poor parents in a cave in the middle of nowhere and with no room in the inn — is the cosmic everything, because this is the love that makes the world go round. This is the love on which everything, however great or small, depends.

Perhaps this is why St. Francis held dear the image of the Nativity and why he brought it to life through replication in Greccio. He wanted to remember God’s humility in a palpable way and to invite others to become small in order to see it, too. Only in following the small Christ-child into the cave of humiliation and get turned upside down — which is actually the right way up — can we become who we are and see things as they are. Only from this position of complete dependence can we really see.

Seeing things rightly requires humility. When we begin to obtain humility, we begin perceiving the greatness of small things. We begin understanding the greatness of loving God and neighbor in simple gestures and with simple words. When we emerge from the Christmas cave this year, may we, like Francis, begin to see everything differently. May we see everything, not according to our preferences, figments of imagination, visions of control, or nightmarish fears, but as they are — completely dependent upon God. And may this new vision continually convert our hearts.

The real wonder Christmas lies in this, that in the strangest of reversals, the Creator became creature, the One on whom everything depends became dependent, and thus revealed the truth that all things hang suspended on humble love. And in manifesting such a mystery, Christmas beckons us to become small and take up the powerfully foolish way of love.

1. GK Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 37. ↩︎
2. GK Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 39-40. ↩︎