Doves and the Christ Child: January 2011

The Savior was very often pictured as the Christ Child in holy cards of the late 19th century, and this was based on sound theology. Eternally the Son of God and Son of Man, Christ is unchanging and can be received into the heart as clearly in his infancy and his childhood as in the years of his adult ministry. Here we see God's little friends, the doves, the little flock of devout souls, coming to Him in perfect confidence with their petitions in their beaks: patience, love, fervor...

With one hand, Jesus points to his Heart and with the other He reaches out to receive each petition that is brought to Him; the one He holds for all to see is "fiat" - God's will be done. This icon of grace is trinitarian: His eyes are raised to the Father from whom he is never separated, and, from the locus of His saving work on the cross, the grace of the Holy Spirit radiates out eternally to all the world.